Susan Boyle sashayed out into the public forum - she's frumpy; her clothes and hair were awful; the judges were obviously skeptical and the audience laughed at her.

Then she opened her mouth and sang like a lark.

And we were astonished because she made us remember that looks aren't everything. The package isn't always pretty.

Susan Boyle reminded us that talent trumps all.

She's not a "lovable frump" - she's an extraordinarily talented singer. Everyone who tries out for those talents shows has "pluck."

It was Susan's voice that made us take notice.

That's why we cried at that clip - that's why Susan Boyle seized the imagination of people in the UK and in the US.

We were confronted with the beautiful truth that the package is irrelevant if you've got the goods stashed inside.

"Jim" is right: it's not either/or.

Of course she has a wonderful voice. And a feisty personality to go with it.

But there's something else... and the following two items articulate it better than I can.

from Entertainment Weekly, written by Lisa Schwartzbaum:

"...Right now I'm pondering why the experience of watching and listening to Ms. Boyle makes so many viewers cry, me among them. And I think I've got a simple answer, at least for me: In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging. The right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts. The unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms. Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace. She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective from time to time. Yep. Simple as that. That's why I weep. What's your excuse?"

and from the St. Louis Riverfront Times blog:

"Remember her? Yes! I'll remember, as I'm listening to her recordings, the grace and dignity with which she carried herself. Dignity and humility are a rare combination. I'll remember that she seemed nearly as surprised by the adoration from the judges as I was at the strength of her voice and character.
She didn't merely make us 'feel better' for 10 seconds: she inspired us. Inspiration is something feeling humans never forget.
And Matt, it didn't sound to me as though she had a 'nothing life' (before this happened). It sounded to me like she filled her life with honorable and charitable work.
I will remember Susan Boyle."

Anonymous, Unless something changed over night I'm quite certain the word "British," which is how I referred to Ms. Boyle, includes Scots.

But thanks anyway for the snark--and the geography lesson.

Besides, she's Scottish, not English.

Agree with everyone on here about Susan's talent. She can sing and that's the biggest thing. But the YouTube appeal also had as much to do with the judges' and the audiences' reaction to Susan. To watch hard-hearted Simon Cowell melt in real time as she sang was a rarity and underlined the very point here - talent trumps all, and authenticity is the icing on the cake.

It's not either/or. If Susan Boyle had conventionally good looks to go with her incredible voice, she would have done well on the show, no doubt, and might have even generated some traffic on youtube. BUT...

What made Susan such a smash hit was that this brilliant voice came out of someone who presented to the audience something quite different, whether you call it frumpy or something else is immaterial. The plain fact is the audience clearly expected Susan to be a joke act. And, beautifully, Susan smashed those expectations with her very first note.

It was those smashed expectations that provided the rocket fuel to Susan's rise to fame. Her talent and "physical vitality", along with her engaging personality are and will continue to be essential to her success, but they alone would have been unlikely to make her the overnight sensation she has become.

Michael:

The more I think about that unfortunate "expert" Simon Dumenco smugly asserting that the advertising industry knew all about the secret of Susan Boyle's appeal long before she appeared on "Britain's Got Talent" and YouTube, and that her secret is, she's a "lovable schlump," the angrier I get.

Mr. Dumenco is a tone-deaf chump, an amusical schlump. He doesn't understand the first thing about Susan's appeal, which is first, last, and always a purely musical one.

Now I see why many poets end up in advertising. Like Mr. Dumenco, the vast majority of poets don't understand anything about music, either. But they think they do.

How sad for Mr. Dumenco that he suffers from the additional handicaps of knowing very little about advertising, lovable schlumps, and Susan Boyle, in addition to his ignorance of the powers of music.

And you, Michael, who have a sincere love of many kinds of music--Are you trying to tell me that your first reactions when you listened to Susan Boyle's video weren't amazement and something akin to joy? Come on! The one hundred million people who've listened to Boyle on YouTube don't give a dump whether Susan is a "lovable frump"!

Bill Sweetland

Michael:

Toni is right. If Susan Boyle didn't have a huge, glorious, bright, penetrating, wonderful voice, and equally important, an impeccable technique AND vast expressive powers, good taste, good ideas, and musicianship to burn, her "frumpy pluck" would have gotten her booed off the stage.
Michael, you think those thousands in her audience were cheering her "pluck"? You and the publicist you quote are quite mistaken. The people in Susan Boyle's audience were overwhelmed by the power and beauty of her voice, which triumphs even over the vile sonic quality of that video.
Besides, Susan Boyle considered as a physical specimen is NOT a "frump."
Her mere physical vitality easily lifts her out of that category, and makes Mr. Simon Dumenco's irrelevant "expert analysis" of Ms. Boyle as the latest in a long line of "lovable schlumps" not only silly but insulting.

Bill Sweetland

Toni's right--if the woman couldn't care a tune in a basket, pluck would have been wasted. Still, the combination of pluck and talent is why people have been and still are talking about Susan Boyle.

This misses the point. Beyond frump, schlump, or any -ump word you can think of, SUBSTANCE appeals -- which is to say Susan Boyle has a great voice with spot-on intonation, and she delivered without pretense. The fact she's not anybody's image of an idol added a surprise factor that sealed the deal.