“Britain’s Got Talent runner-up Susan Boyle has been taken to The Priory Clinic in London with exhaustion. The Scottish singing sensation is said to be drained after losing out to dance group Diversity on the ITV1 show”.
I had managed to avoid the whole of Britain’s Got Talent until where I was last weekend on saturday night a friend decided to show some of the YouTube clips.
Frankly, I thought the winners Diversity – whilst clever & talented dancers – were quite dull as a performance, and that Susan Boyle, whilst she could moderately well hold a note (though the opening of her performance of Memory was rather shaky), was no better than practically any singer to have come out of any national, or even regional level music college. The notes were coming out, the tone was OK, but there was no personality behind the singing – a good performer makes the piece their own. A mediocre performer might as well be a pianola.
But as for the current story of her being taken to hospital because of not being able to cope with the stress of not winning – well, harsh as it might seem to say so, that’s just tough I’m afraid. If the upset of coming second is enough to make her go to pieces, then she’s just not suited to a career in performing arts; ‘coming second’, knockbacks, rejections, and harsh criticism are facts of life in that world.
Performing arts is a stressful world; like it or not, you need to be mentally hard to cope in it. Most people who are successful in it have had a long preparation for it, in most cases since children – they cut their stress teeth by being sick all over the bishop at the cathedral in the primary school diocesan concert, by being part of the National Festival of Music for Youth concerts, by doing their grades, and by doing the music festival competition circuit. Stress is, as they say, part of the gig.
Susan Boyle had her two weeks of fame – if it was her dream to be a professional singer, she should be grateful for what she got. But just because it was her dream to be a professional singer, that doesn’t mean she has a constitutional right to have had that dream turn into reality. Whether she was mentally fit for it or not.
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