UPDATED 4-20-09: Susan Boyle: The frumpy virgin who's slaying them on YouTube

The link.

All politics and no fun makes Johnny a dull boy.

I know we have all seen or will see this, but I want to record it for posterity on my blog. It's been a rough week at the office or I would have done this earlier (having waited, I cannot embed it; embedding has been disabled by request).

The lyrics follow the below article from cnet news:

She has the eyebrows of a Roman Emperor. She has the square shoulders of one of his centurions. And she walks like a bouncer who had one too many years in the NFL.

When Susan Boyle stepped onto the stage of "Britain's Got Talent" this past weekend, the audience laughed and the judges could barely stop their cheeks from bulging through a guffaw.

Here was a self-confessed, never-been-kissed, unemployed 47-year-old Scotswoman who, when she saw herself on television, said she was mortified that she "looked like a garage."

She told the judges she wanted to be a professional singer. Simon Cowell (yes, he) looked like he wanted to ask her to clean his car.

She insisted she wanted to be like Elaine Page, a diminutive English singer who has starred in "Evita," amongst other musicals. The audience choked.

Then Susan Boyle began to sing.

Frankly, she hasn't stopped. More than 6 million people have already turned to YouTube to see what all the fuss is about. They're crying in Calcutta. They're bawling in Brussels.

Why? Because watching someone so far removed from anyone's physical conception of a star finally get an audience for her extraordinary voice is as moving an experience as you're likely to enjoy this year.

Here all the unrealized hopes and dreams that so many harbor till their death are laid bare in an operetta of just a few minutes.

Here is a woman who suffered mild brain damage at birth, who was laughed at in school, and who has probably been laughed at for most of her 47 years because she lived with her mother, because she lives with her cat, and because she doesn't look like friends are supposed to look.

Yes, she is now famous. She will get a recording contract. And, one suspects, she might not enjoy it all as others might.

But if, on watching the YouTube clip, you do not spontaneously burst into tears (I give you at the most 30 seconds into her performance), then you are either an alien creation of Ray Kurzweil or you should pop along to your local shrink for some considerable surgery.
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Les Miserables I Dreamed a Dream lyrics (only the parts in bold were sung):

There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame

He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years [our life] together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
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UPDATE from The Washington Post in an article entitled: "Suddenly Susan: Singer's Town Is Agog."