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Bacolod City, Philippines Monday, December 10, 2012
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The Good Life
with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit
OPINIONS

Susan’s songs
from the stage

The Good Life
with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Sensational singer Susan Boyle recently confessed she once skipped classes when she was 13 to watch Donny Osmond sing. This year, she just doesn’t get to watch or be with Donny, she, in fact, sings with him in a duet, one of the cuts in her latest album, “Standing Ovation” released abroad a few weeks ago. Susan sings “This is the Moment” with Donny, one of the nine memorable tracks in this album that’s bound to climb the charts, if it is not yet up there.

Aside from Donny, there is another duet here, Susan with Michael Crawford, the original phantom of the opera. They both sing “The Music of the Night,” and here, Susan simply proves hers is a voice that belongs to musical theatre. With extraordinary control of her vocal chords, Susan transforms into a Christine Daae, the Phantom’s obsession. The woman even succeeds to capture the seduction that goes on between Christine and the Phantom.

And therein lies the power and attraction – even seduction, ha! – of Susan’s voice. It has the ability to take on any song and make it her own. The entire album, in fact, is a collection of classics from musical theatre and Susan breathes life into each one of them and leaves us breathless.

There is “Somewhere over the rainbow,” the timeless Judy Garland piece that comes alive here with Susan stamping her own style on it – slowing down here, hastening there, going low and going high, all in her own inimitable way. Plus of course, the voice that once blew the world away when she debuted in Britain’s Got Talent.

She also displays this power over her vocal chords in “The Winner Takes it All”, the Abba signature song that had been reborn in Broadway and the movies recently. One would think that after its success as a song sung by the original composers, and then sang again in Broadway and yet again in “Mamma Mia!” the movie, there is no nothing else that can be expected from it.

But as she has done with every song she has sang, Susan takes on “The Winner Takes it All” and makes it her own. In “Send in the Clowns,” Susan controls the song with a more pronounced nasal interpretation, the better to capture the character’s introspection: “Isn't it rich?/Isn't it queer,/Losing my timing this late/in my career?/And where are the clowns?/There ought to be clowns…” The silver-haired Dame Judi Dench, with her near-breaking voice, may have given us the most heartfelt version of this Sondheim classic, but I think Susan’s can give it a run for its money.

Yet, if there is one song in this album that really blew me, who is definitely not musical – my music teacher once said I was deaf – it is Susan’s rendition of “Bring Him Home,” one of the most stirring Jean Valjean pieces in “Les Miz”. For someone to take on this powerful song and make it his or her own is an accomplishment, after all, the Valjean songs are some of the most vocally-demanding on stage. For a woman to take it, as Susan does, and make it thoroughly hers, is an extraordinary accomplishment.

In Les Miz, as it was sang by Valjean, this song sounded so endearingly revolutionary. On one level, it sounded of a father struggling to save his son, on another of a patriot crying for the birth of his nation. Susan simply makes it a mother’s – at some points a lover’s – pining.

The singer makes the song. Thank you, Susan, for this gift.*

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