REAL WOMEN HAVE VIBRATO:

Unlikely Singer Is YouTube Sensation (SARAH LYALL, 4/18/09, NY Times)

She has been watched by more than 20.2 million people (and counting) on YouTube, Twittered about by Demi and Ashton, praised by Patti LuPone, admired by the bloggerati, snapped by the paparazzi, swarmed by camera crews, interrogated by reporters and restyled, sort of, for American television.

But now Susan Boyle, the middle-aged church volunteer whose soaring performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” on a British talent show last week turned her into the world’s newest instant celebrity, at youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY, is trying to catch her breath.

“All the attention has been quite an upheaval, and she is quite tired,” Miss Boyle’s brother, John, told reporters on Thursday outside her tiny pebbledash cottage in tiny, previously unexciting Blackburn, Scotland. “I have taken her away to let her have some peace and quiet before the next round.” [...]

Miss Boyle’s performance has been significant, too, in that it has unexpectedly provoked a debate about prejudice against the not so young and not so beautiful. The contradictions in the situation seem encapsulated by the fact that the third “Britain’s Got Talent” judge, Amanda Holden — who is lovely, 38, artfully put together and seemingly unable to move her face to register surprise — said that Miss Boyle should resist submitting to a Hollywood-style makeover.

“I won’t let Simon Cowell take her to his dentist, and I certainly won’t let her near his hairdresser,” she told The Daily Mirror. “The minute we turn her into a glamourpuss is when it’s spoilt.”