Neil McCormick __________________________________

Susan Boyle: sympathy for the devil?

Susan Boyle’s performance of The Rolling Stones’ classic ‘Wild Horses’ on her American television debut is such a typically audacious Simon Cowell manoeuvre, its hard to know whether to be appalled or applaud his Satanic daring. Just like his appropriation of Leonard Cohen’s (and Jeff Buckley’s) ‘Hallelujah’ for X Factor, Cowell has staged another blitzkrieg raid on one of the sacred spaces of rock culture.

‘Wild Horses’ is not just any old rock and roll song. It’s a raw, emotional country ballad from 1971’s Sticky Fingers, when The Stones had moved away from pop, led by Keith Richards on a journey deep into the roots of their favourite music. It is probably hardcore fans’ favourite period and this is the big ballad at its centre, not a huge hit single, and not as well known to the general public as the more saccharine ‘Angie’, but rather a kind of distillation of the relationship between Mick and Keith, when they were still the Glimmer twins, two poles of attraction, constantly pulling apart yet bound together. Live, it is often performed as an acoustic duet, and still symbolically represents a moment of harmony, mutual dependency and lingering affection between the increasingly divided Jagger and Richards pairing. So it is a song with a special magic about it, and one can almost sense Cowell’s glee as he descends upon it, dragging it into the crass spotlight of his lowest common denominator entertainment empire.

Does anybody really believe Cowell is a Rolling Stones fan? This is the man who said the Beatles wouldn’t have made it on the X Factor, so one can only imagine his thoughts on Jagger’s mangled singing and Richards superbly sloppy playing. I doubt he is even familiar with the original. One imagines he has teams of minions crawling through back catalogues seeking out such gems. Perhaps he alighted on it through one of the many cover versions. Susan Boyle is certainly not the first person to sing ‘Wild Horses’, and not even the worst. Indeed, Gram Parsons recorded it with The Flying Burrito Brothers before the Stones version was released. That’s how cool this song is. It’s been covered by Leon Russell, Neil Young, soul group Labelle, Elvis Costello, Alicia Keys, Guns N Roses, Dave Matthews and such unlikely Stones acolytes as The Cranberries and Deacon Blue. Maybe Cowell heard Sheryl Crows’ or (lord help us) Natasha Bedingfield’s versions. But most likely it was brought to his attention when a contestant on Canadian Idol performed the song. He would have noted how melodic it was, how potentially epic. He would have mentally erased Richard’s guitars and replaced it with a full orchestra. And he would have delighted in the counter-intuitive notion of the uncoolest star on the planet greeting her American audience with a song by a couple of the original icons of rock cool. It is the final proof that the Rolling Stones have indeed gathered moss. Their image may never recover.

To some, of course, such a version would be a kind of travesty, which must have made it all the more appealing. To most it would be a novelty, which is the area of music in which Cowell is most comfortable. One can only be thankful that he didn’t alight on ‘Sympathy For The Devil’, but that may have been too close to the bone.

Boyle acquitted herself well enough. It’s hard to object to her. She may not be the outstanding singer her fans laud her as but she has a story that connected with the public and she performs with authentic emotion and technical skill, and that’s really what the whole TV talent show circus is all about. I can’t imagine her in pre-fame days, sitting in her room, listening to a crackling vinyl copy of ‘Sticky Fingers’ and dreaming of the time she would get to sing it out to the whole of America, but she seemed to find something to connect to and she performed it like she believed in it. Maybe it’s the line ‘graceless lady’. Yet there a bleeding despair at the heart of that song that she can never touch, especially in a version as musically anodyne as this, where all the nuance is reduced to a plodding piano and identikit orchestration, the sound of a million middle of the road ballads. And the phrase “wild horses” seems as distant from Susan Boyle’s persona as it is possible to get. Maybe she should have changed the lyric to fit in with her own reality: “A number 42 bus couldn’t drag me away from you.” The funny thing about her performance on America’s Got Talent is that even the audience don’t recognise the song til she gets to the chorus, when a ripple of shock and awe goes through the crowd.

Wild Horses has given Simon Cowell his water cooler moment, and may give Susan Boyle her first US hit. After this, you can expect to hear the song performed in every karaoke session ‘til kingdom come, to be bellowed in pubs and parties by every amateur balladeer until there is not an ounce of the original sentiment left to wring out. There’s something to look forward to. In the meantime, we have Susan Boyle’s definitive version. Although frankly, there aren’t enough wild horses left in the land to get me to listen to it again.