Two great columns on Susan Boyle from EW.com:
Lisa Schwarzbaum:
In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging — the right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts — the unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms. Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace. She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective from time to time.
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/04/susan-boyle-why.html
Ken Tucker:
Never underestimate the age factor. Yes, we live in a time when the youth audience commands box office profits and drives TV programming via advertisers who want “young eyeballs” to watch shows. But there’s a huge segment of the population that feels cut out, annoyed, and even angry about this situation. Lots of middle-aged people are fed up with being dismissed as “gray-hairs” and out-of-it; the success of Boyle is one small but potent example that you’re not ready for the trash — or as Boyle would probably say, the dustbin — at age 30.
http://watching-tv.ew.com/2009/04/why-susan-boyle.html?iid=top25-5+reasons+why+Susan+Boyle+is+different+from+your+usual+overnight+sensation
And another from the Times:
“Fairytales don’t come any more satisfactory than this,” wrote columnist Melanie Reid in The Times.
“The sisterhood of the plain, those of us who will never look like Girls Aloud, nor even Girls Aloud’s grandmothers, are cheering as never before.
“Susan Boyle is the ugly duckling who didn’t need to turn into a swan; she has fulfilled the dreams of millions who, downtrodden by the cruelty of a culture that judges them on their appearance, have settled for life without looking in the mirror.”
Amen, and amen.