So the Toothy Wonder releases an album.
Don't all rush just yet.
In case you had forgotten exactly who Paul Potts is - and lord knows, I wish I had, but he keeps coming up in my Katherine Jenkins Google Alerts. He is the pub crooner of little talent who spluttered and warbled his way through almost a minute and a half of Nessun Dorma, sending the audience of musical ignorami into pant-wetting at their shock of hearing a tune (from the orchestra, well it wasn't an orchestra, it was a backing track of an orchestra). After one-and-a-half minutes of utter mediocrity, these people felt fit to declare on YouTube that Paul Potts has done more for opera than anyone and that he is the greatest opera singer of all time.
Incidentally, he marketed himself on this talent show as being shy and lacking in confidence, which seems bizarre for someone who stood as candidate for Bath City Council in 1995 (aged just 24) and again in 1999, getting elected for the Liberal Democrats.
In typical Lib Dim style, wanting to be all things to all people, in his CV for Bath Opera (by all accounts an amateur outfit for people prepared to pay to sing, much like a Sunday football team), he claimed to have studied for six months in Italy under Pavarotti. When it was suggested that this made him less of an untrained amateur than he had previously claimed, it quickly became that he had attended a masterclass held by Pav. Which was a good thing, because six months studying in Italy is six months not representing the electors of Bath. And as someone said on Facebook "Shy and humble my arse. I met him when he lurched up to London to sing for a certain North London opera company a few years back..."
Anyway, all that aside, the boy wonder, the best thing that has happened to opera since,oh well, you know, since somebody worked out how to hack gonads off choirboys, has released an album, filled with opera arias such as:
- Nessun Dorma from Puccini's Turandot,
- Time to Say Goodbye (Con te partiro) from some opera or other;
- Amapola, made famous by the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra;
- Everybody Hurts (Ognuno Soffre) - that is an Italian (cos opera's Italian, innit) of REM's Everybody Hurts (Jesus Wept);
- Caruso - oh that's about a famous singer, so it's opera innit;
- Nella Fantasia, previously made famous by Dame Warbling Barbie of Neath Port Talbot;
- You Raise Me Up, also in foreign to be more sophistica'ed;
- My Way, in Italian, because it's a crap song in English that no one likes whether it be by Frank Sinatra or Sid Vicious;
- Cavatina, presumably from that well-known opera The Deer Hunter, and
- Music of the Night, made famous by Frank 'Ooh Betty' Spencer.
Sadly - or maybe not so sadly - I cannot find any excerpts online. It is my experience that new CDs usually include a track or two, or a promotional video, or 30 second excerpts of each track. However, despite searching Amazon, SonyBMG, PP's official website, PP's MySpace, I can't find a note of it. Perhaps it is so truly bad that they hope it will shift half a million to the thickos (by definition...), and he can fade back into the obscurity of 9-5. I suppose I could walk round to the Carphone Warehouse and buy a copy, but I think having to walk past past the newsagent and chemist makes it more of an effort than it's worth.
Although I am quite happy to pimp my ass to any mega media moduls for a consideration.
no idiotic comments, please
