Connie Talbot
Over The Rainbow

For a more accurate and complete understanding of what follows, and before continuing with the reading, it is essential to watch the following video.

I'll be honest, until recently I didn't have the slightest idea who Connie Talbot was. Not that there was much to know about a six-year-old girl, but sometimes it happens that in the net of one of those so-called talent shows, which have been raging everywhere for a few years now, a real little mermaid gets caught.

Surely I must not have been the only one left stunned and speechless after her audition, judging by the expressions and emotions of the entire jury, who until then were too focused on throwing back broken shoes and rusty debris into the water to seriously consider the little one's audition. After all, no one ever expected that such a great gift could be hidden behind such a tender little angel. Yet, as soon as little Connie begins to sing, her talent unfolds in all its disarming grandeur, and it even seems like you can hear the whisper of crystal glasses accompanying her in the background.
Her parents realized her enormous potential when, at her maternal grandmother's funeral, the little one sang an ethereal "Over The Rainbow", which her grandmother used to sing to her every night before tucking her in. It was precisely thanks to "Over The Rainbow", her signature song, that little Connie, despite never having taken singing lessons, managed to reach the finals of "Britain's Got Talent 2007". However, she was defeated by Paul Potts' "Nessun Dorma", a British tenor considered by many in his homeland - wrongly - the new Luciano Pavarotti.

The chilling part of this whole affair - besides the audience's sighs during the little one's audition - is the promise, at the end of the show, of earning her in just one year the beauty of a million and possibly more pounds. This "Over The Rainbow", a series of reinterpreted classics, from "Imagine" to "I Will Always Love You", from "Three Little Birds" to "What A Wonderful World", was thus quickly recorded, accompanied by a promotional tour in Asia.

Even at a first uninterested listen, however, what immediately becomes evident is that something has cracked. The spell seems to have vanished, the magic broken, like a swan whose wings have been broken. This, however, is not intended to be a review of the album in a broad sense. What prompted me to write these lines instinctively, moreover of such an antithetical genre, was an annoying overlap in my mind between flash-backs and flash-forwards: those of a young Britney Spears and an adolescent Connie Talbot. After all, the rosy and flowery present of little Connie closely resembles the past of the American starlette, today more than ever at the mercy of her own ghosts. The boundary between the two worlds is quite fragile, and the risk of being swallowed by the music industry is very high, regardless of the skills one has. The same talent shows seem much more interested in creating characters rather than genuinely discovering new talents. The fear is that Connie's childhood and innocence are being fed to an adult and conformist audience that sees in her the personification of the perfect daughter and model child, the same audience that emphasized every little grimace of hers with complacent sighs.

As of today, Connie has signed a contract with the Rainbow Recording Company, the label that produced her first album, and with Data Design Interactive for the creation of a music video game. However, her parents also reveal the emergence in the little one's character of a new side, until then unknown, now that perhaps the shrugs at the question "do you want to be a famous singer?" are just a memory.

Will we hear about Connie Talbot in the future? Honestly, I hope not.