Syco
Pop, 2012

Another year, another collection of cover versions from Susan Boyle. Standing Ovation, supposedly a collection of “the greatest songs from the stage”, is actually a collection of the most tired cover versions of the most overexposed musical tunes out there.

Do we need yet another cover version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow? Memory? All I bloody freaking Ask of You? Oh, and You’ll Never Walk Alone – we can’t forget that. Worse, Ms Boyle offers no new interpretations of the songs, the arrangement and production values are made as anemic as possible for permanent rotation in elevators, and frankly, the whole thing is as lively as a trip to the morgue. Or, being trapped in a Hallmark store where the choice is having this album piped in on constant rotation or Clay Aiken’s butchering of Christmas standards.

The presence of Michael Crawford on The Music of the Night only serves to make Ms Boyle’s squeaky soprano look amateurish in comparison. Donny Osmond, supposedly Ms Boyle’s biggest crush, shows up to perform on All I Ask of You and This Is the Moment, and his animated warbling makes Ms Boyle’s lifeless squeaks look like Autotuned sounds of rigor mortis.

One of these days, the dire tunes from this album will show up on Dancing With the Stars, as it’s tailor-made exactly for people who have not heard the better renditions of these anthems, people who only know of Susan Boyle and Il Divo, find Barbra Streisand too frightening, and therefore, listening to Ms Boyle – truly the fast food truck version of Ms Streisand – taking a dump on another collection of popular tunes makes them feel all enlightened and “classical”.

File this one under simply too ghastly for words.