Search Results Tag: Youtube
Susan Boyle
Britain’s Got Talent star Susan Boyle was dragged into the X Factor Auto-Tune row today when it was revealed that the Scottish singer’s first appearance was digitally tweaked.
The X Factor this week admitted using technology to smooth out faults in contestants’ singing during the audition stages. Today the Standard learned that the same techniques are used on Simon Cowell’s other reality show, Britain’s Got Talent.
In a decade that was defined by the emergence of YouTube, 2009 saw the development of international stars because of exposure on YouTube. According to YouTube’s blog, 2009 was the biggest year yet for online video and for the first time, YouTube is sharing its “Most Watched” video list. Not surprisingly, Susan Boyle is at the top of it. Susan Boyle’s the 48-year old Scottish woman who first shocked Simon Cowell and the judges of Britains’ Got Talent, and then the entire World after clips of her performance were liberally uploaded to YouTube for view. The result was a primal, rapid reaction to her voice, and over 120 million views generated. Of those, my video on Susan Boyle accounted for a tiny share of 2 million views.
The 48-year-old church volunteer who rocketed to fame with her surprising performance on “Britain’s Got Talent” arrived at Tokyo’s international airport Tuesday to prepare for a guest appearance on Japan’s premiere vocal 
variety show, which will be aired live on New Year’s Eve by Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK. Boyle smiled broadly as she greeted a mob of photographers at the airport, but declined a request for an impromptu song, saying her fans would have to wait for the NHK show.
She is scheduled to sing her trademark “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. The NHK program, now in its 60th year, showcases the most popular singers of the year. Most of its guests are Japanese.
Boyle was runner-up in the British talent show, but her performance became a hit on YouTube and made her one of the biggest international celebrities of the year, with more than 120 million views.
Is Susan Boyle about to cross over from reality star to singing star? The 48-year-old Scottish woman, who surprised Simon Cowell earlier this year with her powerful singing voice on Britain’s Got Talent (and then lost the competition), is one of many reality-show contestants to release an album. But I Dreamed a Dream, her debut CD, is performing at a level that goes beyond the usual TV tie-in. According to Billboard, the recording sold 701,000 copies in its first week in the U.S. alone, “the best opening week for a female artist’s debut album” since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking album sales in 1991. She’s just as popular in Canada, though she doesn’t exactly love us back, having twice cancelled plans to visit here. No matter where she goes or doesn’t go, she’s the most popular recording star produced by Cowell’s Talent and Idol TV franchises. And not just because of her famously dumpy appearance, or the publicity she got for a recent bout of exhaustion. She’s the first reality contestant whose CDs have unlimited appeal to reality TV viewers.
Elaine Paige Explains SuBo Virus Statement
On her weekly BBC radio program, musical theatre legend Elaine Paige recently explained the SuBo media dustup.
British paper The Daily Mail recently reported Paige referring to Boyle as “a virus really that spread across the world in a nanosecond.” In a statement to the Daily Mail, Paige clarified: “I wasn’t referring to Susan herself; I was referring to the speed of her fame spreading as fast as a worldwide viral marketing campaign.”
Boyle’s meteoric rise to stardom is well-documented, from her appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent,” which was viewed over 100 million times on YouTube, to the release of her first album, “I Dreamed a Dream.” The album, which came out in December, had the largest ever sales debut for a female artist.
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