Get This Man A Recording Contract

Now.

I’m not generally a fan of operatic tenor voices. To me, Pavarotti is borderline unlistenable. No, sometimes he’s quite unlistenable. The only tenors I’ve actually enjoyed up to now are Placido Domingo and Andrea Bocelli – sometimes.

Paul Potts, for my money, leaves them all in the dust. He’s made me cry – twice – via just YouTube. No other tenor has made me cry even once. I can’t imagine how good he must sound in person, or in a well-engineered recording.

Once again, here he is singing Nessun Dorma.

Update:
Jonah Goldberg, who gets the hat tip for this in the first place, posts a letter which says well what I wanted to say.

His expression before he begins to sing is that of a man resigned to disappointment. Even when he smiles, his eyes convey a profound sadness. He has been a nobody all his life. He, and perhaps only he, knows he has greatness inside of him, but he is obviously a humble man, massively insecure, afraid of rejection, unsure of himself outside the cocoon of anonymity. But you get the feeling he also knows that this may be the one chance he gets to escape the cocoon, and as he begins to sing, you can see him fighting down his fear. I think that is the wellspring of the emotion that pervades his performance. He is fighting against a life of obscurity. By the song’s end, what was an average Joe has stepped up, beaten back his fear, and broken through. In those few seconds, he put the void behind him, and his life will probably be changed forever because he called up the courage at that moment to show what he was really made of. We saw greatness, long denied, finally being born.

Read the whole thing.

Another Update:
He’s had some training, as well as some amateur experience. None of that is surprising; neither does it detract from his performance a whit. Bottom line: He makes an album, I buy it.