Paul Potts is UK’s Most Wanted
Fame has come at last to Paul Potts. Let’s hope that good fortune
follows close behind. Paul Potts certainly deserves it and it’s been
a long time coming.
He may have worked hard for more than ten years to learn his art and try
to get it recognized by opera bosses, but surely the future of Paul
Potts is assured now. Within less than two weeks of winning ITV’s
Britain’s Got Talent TV show, his winning and deeply moving
rendition of Nessun Dorma became the most watched YouTube video and
the fifth most watched video anywhere in June 2007. That’s amazing
when you consider that just two weeks before, very few people knew
who Paul Potts, manager of mobile phone shop, was.
More than a thousand Paul Potts videos have been placed on YouTube
and the three most popular have been visited by over 12 million
people. That’s quite something. It shows that people are not just
interested in how Paul sings – which is amazingly – but they also
care what Paul Potts, the quiet, modest and totally unassuming man –
is like. Many of those videos are interviews and chats as fans are
eager to get whatever snippet they can of Paul Potts. Crowds were
clearly moved to tears by his performances as Paul Potts truly
touched our heartstrings.
The Chicago Tribune in America asks why that is:
And art critic Alan G. Artner says the simplest answer is
astonishment at how anything positive could come from a plump,
gap-toothed cell phone salesman competing in a setting in which
viewers are led to expect failure and ridicule.
"When Potts first stepped onstage, announcing he had come to sing
opera, you saw it on the judges' faces: Opera? From this schlub?
Sharpen your axes.”
You saw the same sentiment magnified on Simon Cowell’s face – and
then Paul Potts began to sing – and he proved all the doubters
wrong.
"But then he began Nessun dorma from Giacomo Puccini's Turandot, and
almost immediately cynicism melted.”
How? – Because Paul Potts possesses an amazing talent that you
certainly don’t see – or hear – very often.
Sure Puccini’s words and beautiful, haunting melody helped to touch
the audience on a deeply emotional level, but not many people could
sing the music as beautifully as Paul Potts did – certainly not many
people who entered Britain’s Got Talent – and even fewer of his
critics.
