As a professionally trained singer, I have a very good ‘ear’ and can generally pick up music very quickly.  While watching American Idol I found myself on the side of Simon Cowell more times than not.  As an armchair critic, I take guilty pleasure in making judgments about the singer’s capability, and seeing if my comments agree with the ‘experts’.

When I watched Susan Boyle sing yesterday, I must say I cringed when I heard the first notes out of her mouth.  Like many, I thought ‘oh, oh’ and felt she was doomed.  But she redeemed herself well, and carried on to produce a wonderful, if not magnificent version of Memories from the musical Cats.

Now, this song has been beaten to death over the years.  It’s a karaoke favorite, and usually gets butchered.  The original was sung by Sarah Brightman, who was then married to Andrew Lloyd Webber, and it was magnificent.  Barbra Streisand has also sung it well, and for those of us who tried ‘ahem’, well, it would have been better not to have bothered…

But it was Susan Boyle’s cheeky Fearless quality that lit up the screen on her first occasion, and it was her courage to come up and do it again, this time knowing there was more at stake than the first time.  She already knew what was coming.  She has been drowning in adoration since her first performance, and without even knowing her, I would say she was probably all in knots this time around because she didn’t want to let anyone down. In the end, she didn’t. She clapped her hand on her diaphragm and held on for dear life.

At the end, all three judges stood up and applauded her bravery and her fearlessness.  Simon Cowell even apologized for his rude behavior on her first appearance. He may not have considered her the best singer he has ever heard, but up against a line-up of weird acts including an escapologist, I can only say, the woman has enormous ‘chutzpah’ and I applaud her for stepping into the limelight and taking her chances.

Susan Boyle is amazing because she was willing to take the risk of exposing herself to the world.  Not many people will step over that threshold.  For that reason she gets my FEARLESS LADY AWARD OF THE MONTH. Brava!

I couldn’t end this post today without also including an article by Chris Matyszczyk on CNET It is funny, irreverent and yes, poignant.

After exposing so much reality, who could be surprised that she began with a false note?

Susan Boyle, the singer who entered the world’s consciousness and was given a very large apartment there, all because of YouTube, stepped onstage for her second performance in “Britain’s Got Talent” to expectations that exceeded anything she could possibly deliver.

Her hair was darker (though still pleasantly wild), her eyebrows still brooding, and her dress a little more expensive.

Her voice, though, faltered under the lights of a billion eyeballs.

The first notes of “Memory” from the musical “Cats” weren’t ones that Andrew Lloyd Webber had put there.

But a stoicism built from the bricks of a thousand days of damp, dark Scottish existence and a life experience of being bullied, teased, and tormented for her supposed disabilities, was her lifeboat.

She clutched her stomach twice, almost as if her diaphragm was a malfunctioning bagpipe bag.

She gave it a couple of squeezes and any twitchy bats that might have happened to have taken temporary residence in the bag fluttered away, leaving her voice to regain its strength.

Was it as good a performance as her “I Dreamed A Dream” from the first show? No. Her life didn’t depend on this one. Neither did we. In fact, uncertain notes crept back in near the end like recurring doubts.

It didn’t matter. Because now the world has embraced her being far more than her singing.

The judges all gave her a standing ovation, as if they had caught the wrong flight and had been sent back in time to a party convention in Brezhnev’s USSR. The voters made her their first choice for a place in next week’s final, because not doing so would have denied all their honest instincts.

The rest of us sat there and began to realize that by embracing her so absolutely, by bathing in her story so totally, we may already be losing her. In tiny steps, she’s becoming a professional. And we will look upon her differently, like a child that’s suddenly got her own money, buys her own dresses and may, oh God, get her tongue pierced.

The first cut was the deepest. Now we can enjoy, we can admire, we can relive.

But it may never be the same again.

To learn more about being FEARLESS go to The Fearless Factor and pick up your complimentary e-course The 4 Easy Steps To Overcoming Fear and create your own Susan Boyle experience.