Susan Boyle "I Dreamed a Dream"

Sweetheart Keith got me a gift earlier this week: Susan Boyle's "I Dreamed a Dream".

I felt a little frisson of excitement until, yes, a little voice in my head whispered "Aging Punk Chick, have you really become this middle-aged and mainstream!" but I ignored it and immediately put the album on.

It's a very good album, folks, and even, now and again, a Truly Great Album. Great heart. Great voice. Great intregrity. Great song choice. I've had it on high rotation for three days and only now skipping the tracks that I'm over: "Amazing Grace" was first to go, then "Silent Night", and just now, for the first time, I chose to skip "Daydream Believer".

However, my ear is still loving the rest. In fact, the CDs just finished for the umpteenth time and I'm off right now to start it again.

"Wild Horses", playing now, is astonishing and totally deserves to be played at highest damn-the-neighbours volume and it's amazing how a song written about heroin addiction, in different hands and with different intonation and feel, has turned into a song about caring for a dying mother.

And "You'll See" and "Proud" build into something so nicely Angry-Rock-Chick it's hard to believe Susan is just a lady from a little village in Scotland. And when she does the Gospel numbers, like "How Great Thou Art" and "Up to the Mountain", it's hard to believe she isn't "Little Churchie Lady from Alabama" who leads a choir somewhere deep in Ku Klux Klan territory!

And "Daydream Believer" has just started and, this time, I haven't chosen to skip it, although it's still on fast-track to the "program-it-out" button.

The showtunes are all great, of course, since that's her genre of choice, but whatever Brains Trust gave her the other songs to do, and they're weird choices for the most part, kudos to them, I say.
She's made them all her own.

Well done! Nice, nice, nice album! And, yes, it connects so well emotionally it definitely deserves to be played damn-the-neighbours LOUD.

Guess what I'll be getting Loved-Ones for Christmas!