Susan Boyle just sold a million records for the second week running

[23_Carra_Gold]

Why?

[dirty_sanchez]

Because the general public are dicks.

[William_Ulsterman]

the rage against x factor facebook shit is futile as well. the Uk is full of Shite factor watching Vicky Pollards unfortunately.

[Manny]

As always, David Mitchell writes a good article about this:

 

David Mitchell | Boyle's in the bag. Now for Marmite | Comment is free | The Observer

 

Boyle's in the bag. Now for Marmite.

 

David Mitchell bought his second-ever album last week. Whether he likes it or not is immaterial – at least he feels he's joining in

 

I bought an album last week. "Big deal!" you're thinking until I tell you it's the first one I've bought for 20 years and only the second in my life. The other was But Seriously by Phil Collins. If you've listened to it you might understand why I didn't go music crazy.

 

You'll probably also think that I'm weird. Tastes in music are like religions – people use them to unite against one another. That makes me the musical equivalent of an atheist during the Crusades: everybody hates me, I'm less than human – just like people with no sense of humour seem to me. (I'm not going on about those who get offended by comedy again – I mean that sort you occasionally meet who, however racy their frame of reference, just don't get jokes. They laugh bewilderedly, too often and in the wrong places, desperate not to be found out. To them the world seems peppered with bafflingly hysterical people – a conspiracy of giggling, brought on by invisible tickling sticks.)

 

I've had long conversations with music-lover friends who think my attitude is a pose. They refuse to believe that I don't secretly have a much-loved collection of jazz vinyl or sneak into Proms. When I point out that I quite like a tune and it's nice to have the radio on in the car, that just makes it worse, as if I've said going to the ballet is a great way to appreciate a sprung floor.

 

That's all behind me now. I've doubled my record collection in a week. How many musos can say that? I'll miss the passing of my one-album existence, though – it was a quirky fact for panel shows and interviews. It provided diverting "I'm mad, me!"-style chat. I could then moan about the decorative state of my flat, say I'm obsessive about locking the front door and mention the DVD – a neat little self-parodic marketing dance to distract journalists from trying to get to know the "real me". I don't know him, so I don't see why they should.

 

But I simply had to buy Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream. It's number one in the charts here, in the US, Australia and Ireland – whereas I only bought But Seriously because it was top of the Oxford Our Price's store chart. Either people are idiots, I reasoned, or this record must be brilliant.

 

I didn't really think that. The confusing and varying disparity between the popularity and perceived worth of various products and artistic endeavours is much documented and discussed. Why are some shit things so popular – Madame Tussauds and Dan Brown books, for example? And yet some popular things are also brilliant, like The Simpsons and the Angel of the North. While other brilliant things hardly anyone buys – I'd put my friend's first novel and sherry in this category. And then there are things for which there's an apparent consensus of abhorrence, and yet loads of people do: hogging the middle lane, going to James Blunt concerts and so on.

 

So I realised the commercial viability of I Dreamed a Dream is no guarantee of musical excellence. It'll just make a fortune for some, while others' minds turn darkly to eugenics. I've listened to it now and I think I prefer it to But Seriously. Mind you, it's been a long time since I heard that – I couldn't get the cassette to go on my iPod.

 

If you'd never encountered music before, you'd probably think the Boyle album was great. One or two of the songs she covers are in that "good and popular" Simpsons category and she sings them OK, even if the arrangement is incredibly schmaltzy. But, after half a bottle of Baileys, it would make you cry. Maybe that's what you need to appreciate it properly, like they say about rave music and ecstasy.

 

So it's not utterly unlistenable-to – like the noise of metal grinding against metal, the distressed screaming of a baby or an hour of drilling interspersed with vomiting. It's some songs. For the millions who buy it, it'll hit the spot, just like beans on toast or a packet of crisps.

 

Such trashy but comforting British processed foods are also enjoying a sales surge, and not just at home. Demand has forced the Paris branch of WH Smith to double the size of its British foods section (it's expanding as fast as my music collection), which, as well as crisps and baked beans, sells Jelly Babies, custard and Ribena; and the export market to Poland is up 55% this year as a result of returning Polish migrants having acquired a taste for Walkers shortbread and Patak's curry paste.

 

In the name of Phil Collins, why? "Well, you can't beat Marmite/fish fingers/Monster Munch!" is the response. Of course you can; they're not delicious – they're cheap and they taste fine. But people like them because of what they associate them with. For the British, they're the flavours of childhood. In Paris, they remind expats of home and let contrarian locals cock a snook at their own domestic gastronomy. For the returning Poles, liking things out of British packets will seem cosmopolitan and well-travelled.

 

These purchases – whether it's Dairy Milk or I Dreamed a Dream – aren't about taste, they're about identity. We flatter ourselves that we buy things based on our judgment of quality and price, but that's a secondary factor. Fundamentally we buy the sort of things that feel appropriate, based on the class we come from, the groups we aspire to be part of, or the opinions we find attractive.

 

Our purchases are tribal, neo-religious signifiers. "I think I'm the type of person who buys this sort of wine so I'll tell myself it tastes better than the sorts other types buy." "Guys like me buy fish and chips not kebabs/Macs not PCs/Dan Brown not Ian Rankin/the Guardian not the Times."

 

People buy the Susan Boyle album to show what tribe they're in: supporters of the Britain's Got Talent phenomenon who are warmed, rather than annoyed, by the megastardom it's granted a random woman. Meanwhile reality TV sceptics define themselves with different purchases. More important than the specifics of music or food is the fact that, like a Crusade to the Holy Land, our purchasing choices give us a feeling of belonging. That's the real taste of beans on toast.

[Crazyhorse7778]

She's a freak show.

[Spy Bee]

She can actually sing.

[Nomad]

I remember years ago before all this x-factor shit come out, the xmas number 1 ment something EVERYONE used to bring songs out to be xmas number 1.

 

Now some sort of x-factor winner brings a new song out each year and goes strait to number 1.

[Lurtz]

Why?

 

Because this country is full of fucking idiots.

[airbags]

I remember years ago before all this x-factor shit come out, the xmas number 1 ment something EVERYONE used to bring songs out to be xmas number 1.

 

Now some sort of x-factor winner brings a new song out each year and goes strait to number 1.

 

"Oh no, the X Factor have ruined the Christmas No. 1 for everybody? Boo fucken boo!"

 

No, they haven't. The winner releases a bland souless dirge around this time every year and it's up to the music buying masses whether they purchase the single or not; just the same as before the X Factor phenomeon. People aren't exactly marched Gestapo style to their local HMV and forced to buy it now, are they? People vote with their wallets what they want the No. 1 to be, same as it always has been.

 

Really, the only people that this affects is the bookies who have lost out on the Christmas No. 1 market so forgive me if I don't exactly shed a tear for them.

 

The whole X Factor Christmas No. 1 era will eventually be a footnote in chart history anyhow when the X Factor reaches the end of it's shelf life as it surely will.

 

Think of how big Big Brother used to be during the 2000 one up to around 2004; people will eventually get sick of something that has such a domineering effect on media, Television and pop culture for months at a time.

 

I give it another two years at the level it's at now, then another three/four years where it gradually diminishes in importance until, Voila; it's gone, just like that.

[Closer To God]

I've never heard her sing, but I have seen her face almost on a daily basis on the internet thing. She doesn't look so good, does she? If she is that good at singing I would not buy it anyway, because I know it sucks.

 

People are strange.

 

[YOUTUBE]fSDc1TF8MSA[/YOUTUBE]

[cochyn]

The charts mean fuck all since Top of the Pops bit the dust.

 

Also, there hasn't been a decent Christmas Number one since Reet Petite in '86.

[Paul]

Who cares? If pushed for an opinion, I'd say that I'm quite pleased that a woman who got publicly humiliated is now coining it in. However, I'm really not that arsed either way.

[Ginny]

Couldnt give a fuck. Try it. Its boss. Nothin bothers you.

[havarantagain]

She's a freak show.

The thing is she is having a positive effect on the war on terror, well at least suicide bombers...... now our Muslim friends know what a real virgin looks like they have decided going to heaven and shagging umpteen virgins isn't what they thought it would be.

[Guest simon]

Maybe ugly but she can sing. Women seem to love her.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Maybe ugly but she can sing. Women seem to love her.

 

Women don't want to be her and men don't want to be with her. She is a half decent singer, like Paul Potts, who, like Paul Potts, went on stage looking like she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards and, like Paul Potts, wasn't as shit at singing as she looked or as us superficial wankers thought she would be.

 

She's not all that special and women only really like her because she gives their ugly arsed hope. Not all women, of course, but the sort that buy this stuff. I hope, like Paul Potts (is that getting tiresome yet?), she makes as much money as she can out of the people that are rushing out to buy it and then, like Paul Potts, I hope she fucks off out of it.

[Guest simon]

Women don't want to be her and men don't want to be with her. She is a half decent singer, like Paul Potts, who, like Paul Potts, went on stage looking like she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards and, like Paul Potts, wasn't as shit at singing as she looked or as us superficial wankers thought she would be.

 

She's not all that special and women only really like her because she gives their ugly arsed hope. Not all women, of course, but the sort that buy this stuff. I hope, like Paul Potts (is that getting tiresome yet?), she makes as much money as she can out of the people that are rushing out to buy it and then, like Paul Potts, I hope she fucks off out of it.

 

Excactly Inspiration.

[Section_31]

There's some kind of mass hysteria to blame when it comes to our celebrity and wealth-obsessed culture. I think that by actually turning up to hear her sing or by buying her shite, some people actually think they're in some way connected to that world, that they've somehow contributed to the 'Susan Boyle' story. People who queue up for ours outside Big Brother auditions etc are the same, they'll tell you they've auditioned for big brother as if they've actually achieved something in life.

 

It underpins the whole country now, it flows through society like some kind of Budhist life force and affects people's viewing habits, the way they dress, the way they go into debt for things they can't afford, the way they treat other people, and their attitude to achievable ambitions (turning down plumbing courses with a sneer in favour of some bullshit dance & prance NVQ).

 

This fame obsession, it's got such a grip on society that the next Labour leader will be chosen for his looks and dress sense, rather than his political philosophy. It's like a widespread madness. But it fascinates me rather than repulses me these days, somebody somewhere is playing the fiddle - and the proles are dancing.

[manwiththestick]

Excactly Inspiration.

 

I don't know what that means but i like it, a lot.

[Malarkey]

Maybe ugly but she can sing. Women seem to love her.

 

That sounds a bit like you, Simon.

 

You old womanizer, you.

[Mendoza]

[YOUTUBE]ARZiihLwA34[/YOUTUBE]

[melons]

I have the album, bought it with my own free will will and all that, whilst not something i would listen to every day, i actually do like it. She has a fantastic voice and fair play to her for making use of it to her own benefit. Sunday morning music all the way.

[Guest simon]

That sounds a bit like you, Simon.

 

You old womanizer, you.

 

I beg your pardon! I'm no ugly I take my gigs off and women love it. And that's not because I walk into everything.

[bri]

you can't pull one off to her though

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

She has a fantastic voice

 

Does she, though? I mean, it's not a bad voice but I wouldn't go mad about it. For example...

 

Yt-IBJpEMzA

Edited December 12, 2009 by Numero Veinticinco