Susan Boyle

She walked onto the stage in a frumpy dress, with unwieldy hair and a stout figure, looking very much like a middle-aged Scottish woman who lives alone with her cat.
Which she was.

And then she began to sing.

And she brought the house down.

By now, you've probably heard of Susan Boyle, the 47-year-old unemployed church worker with the voice of a Broadway diva. The YouTube videos of her audition for "Britain's Got Talent" had been viewed more than 40 million times, and by the time you read this, it could be 50 million. She has been interviewed by CBS and Larry King, pursued by newspapers around the world, chased after by Hollywood producers.

This all happened in a week.

And that's what scares me.

A meteor like Elvis
It used to be, if a singer was discovered, it happened small, in a club or an office. A recording was made. Maybe it got played on a radio station. It grew slowly, organically.

Consider Elvis Presley. He was discovered after walking into a Memphis studio to make a record for his mother. Everyone thinks he just took off. But from the time he showed up that day to his first real public performance was over a year, and his first record was released a year after that. Yes, his rise was meteoric. It still took a while.

Today, it takes minutes. Think about it. A week ago, you hadn't heard of Susan Boyle. Now you can listen to a rare 1999 recording she made for a charity project. It's online.

I've been asking myself why Boyle struck such a chord. Someone referred to her as the "Slumdog Millionaire" of music. Maybe that's part of it. We love an underdog story. We relate to the ugly duckling. When Boyle tells the cameras she has "never been kissed," that she has never had a date, that her dream is to be a singer, but she has never been given the opportunity, well, your heart goes out to her.

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