The poll has now closed but I can now reveal the top ten in the second annual Alfie Boe Best Ever Song vote! As you can see, the results are very different from last year:
You Are My Heart’s Delight
Wayfaring Stranger
Parlami D’Amore Mariu
Bring Him Home
A Living Prayer
Rosie
If You Go Away
Fratello Sole, Sorella Luna
Rank Strangers
Je Crois Entendre Encore
And no, it’s not in the right order!
In 2014, the top ten looked like this:
Bring Him Home
A Living Prayer
Rank Strangers
Je Crois Entendre Encore
Wayfaring Stranger
Parlami D’Amore Mariu
Rosie
If You Go Away
Fratello Sole, Sorella Luna
You Are My Heart’s Delight
Of this original top ten, only four songs survive and they happen to be the top four – but will they be the top four this time? You’ll have to wait and see…we’ll be counting down from Friday.
Looking at the albums represented this year, the make up has significantly changed from 2014; then, all the albums bar one had a song in the top ten but this year, only six of his nine albums have an entry. Serenata, Trust, Onward and Classic FM Presents all have two top ten entries whilst Bring Him Home and Storyteller have one each. Trust, named as the most owned Alfie album in an earlier poll, had two songs in 2014 as well but they aren’t the same as this year! Once again, classical and rock Alfie are showing as the most popular genres with Bring Him Home remaining the only musical theatre selection on the list.
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The summer concerts are over and Alfie is in the US to start rehearsals for Broadway’s Les Mis. Ramin Karimloo will be a hard act to follow but I’m sure Alfie will do us proud – look out for the first night review in September.
Now, in case us Alfie Boe fans are likely to be ever so slightly down in the mouth and suffering from post Alfie concert syndrome, here’s a little something to keep you entertained. Back in March, I asked you what your top Alfie moments were and you responded enthusiastically as always. My top Alfie moments included meeting Alfie and hearing him sing Addio Signi di Gloria at Classic FM Live – click here to see the rest.
So, in no particular order, your top ten fan moments are:
Nancy Webb meeting Alfie at the Utah concert in March this year and getting a photo.
Pauline Partridge meeting Alfie unexpectedly outside the Blackpool Opera House and getting a photo.
Marie meeting Alfie (again unexpectedly) in the bar of the Radisson Hotel, Glasgow after the Scottish Proms in the Park, 2013.
Alfie giving his drumsticks to Linda W on the Bring Him Home tour 2011.
The red carpet of the Classic Brits 2013 – Alfie bypassed the waiting press and came straight over to see The Two Linda’s and me. Later that evening he tweeted a photo of the 40th birthday card we had given him.
Cecelia meeting Alfie outside the stage door of the Royal Albert Hall on the Storyteller tour and getting a photo (thanks to Nikki Lewis) – two actually as she spoiled the first one by giving Alfie a peck on the cheek!
Pat, Janet and Cecelia seeing Alfie at breakfast the day the Azura cruise departed.
Bring Him Home with John Owen-Jones at the Royal Albert Hall.
Love reign O’er Me live for the first time.
That show stopping moment when Alfie sang with the Jean Valjean Quartet at the Les Mis 25th anniversary concert – aka the moment most of us were Boed.
You picked some amazing top Alfie moments – again got goosebumps when watching the 25th anniversary video. Other than that, the top moments show how generous Alfie has been when meeting fans – at the Royal Albert Hall on the Storyteller tour, Alfie was actually in the car on the way home when he stopped and got out to sign autographs and have photos.
If you have any more fan memories you’d like to share, please leave a comment – we’d love to see them.
Here we are at the third week of looking back at your favourite Alfie Boe tour moments and we’re also right in the midst of making some more fabulous tour memories from Summer 2015. This week though we’re looking back to my first tour, Storyteller, from March / April 2013. If this isn’t your favourite, you can still vote:
For lots of you though, Storyteller was your favourite and lots of special memories were made. My best memory from this tour was getting Alfie’s towel from Blackpool (yes, I still have it) and him posing for photos at the stage door. Musically, the best moment for me was Alfie and John Owen-Jones singing an impromptu duet on Bring Him Home at the Royal Albert Hall. A few of you agreed with me so let’s see it again:
Your other tour highlights include Margie meeting Alfie at the Brighton stage door, something a whole lot of us were cheering and hoping for as she had come all the way from Australia, hearing Alfie at the sound checks, seeing him race right up to the top balcony of Blackpool Opera House and Alfie singing Led Zeppelin’s Rock & Roll at Bournemouth.
The second video also comes from the Royal Albert Hall and is Shine A Light:
With just a week to go before Alfie’s first date in his mini UK summer tour, excitement is running high. Add to that, the excitement over the release of Classic Quadrophenia today and we Alfie fans are already super excited that summer is here.
So, what better way to look forward to the live dates than to look back at Alfie’s previous tours and choose a favourite – you guessed it, another poll! We haven’t had one for a while, indeed the last was the much discussed Alfie’s Best Look poll which ensured some very lively comments! Thanks to Carole Hunt for the idea for this one.
My favourite tour so far was the Serenata tour of Winter 2014; I felt Alfie’s voice was at his best and the repertoire included songs from his earlier albums that I had never expected to hear him sing live. Having said that, Storyteller was very hard to beat but they were totally different experiences, reflecting Alfie’s continued musical development. One of my favourite moments was hearing Recondita Armonia and Nessun Dorma for the first time in Newcastle (thanks Linda for sharing):
Whichever is your favourite tour, get voting below – results published some time over the summer!
I would also like to know your favourite moment from that tour so please fill in the form below:
Part of the appeal and fun of being an Alfie Boe fan is the friends I’ve made along the way…and there a lot of you out there that I would never have known had it not been for Alfie. Chatting to one of my closest friends recently, we were struck by how much the music we listen to now has been influenced by Alfie and his musical choices. Some of you will be amazed to hear that I do actually listen to other artists (oh alright, it’s not often!) but a lot of the music I’ve discovered in the last couple of years has been driven by Alfie’s musical train. So the next logical step was to write about it!
Looking through my iPod I now have music from Led Zeppelin, Bonnie Raitt, The Clint Boon Experience, The D’Oyly Carte, Emilia Mitiku, Laura Wright, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, John Owen-Jones, Ramin Karimloo, Al Vosper. For me, this diverse group of artists has only one thing in common: Alfie Boe introduced me to them.
Obviously some are a lot more well known than others (I can just imagine the gasp of horror from Linda W at my only really listening to Led Zeppelin in the last year or so) and although I was aware of them I never considered listening to them until Alfie sang their songs or worked with them. This is certainly the case with The Who and Quadrophenia which I listened to for the first time two weeks ago in preparation for Alfie Boe and Quadrophenia – I can honestly say that I really liked it and have listened to some of it again…and I didn’t have to! It goes without saying that I prefer Alfie’s take on I’m One and Love Reigns O’er Me.
Alfie’s well known saying “there’s only two types of music, good and bad” has obviously rubbed off on me or maybe I’m just more willing to embrace new music as I find myself not only listening to but buying music I had previously discarded as being “not my thing”. This is definitely the case with Clint Boon; I was not a fan of the Inspiral Carpets and wasn’t particularly keen to listen to the Clint Boon Experience albums even though Alfie was featured. Of course, when I did listen, I liked it (and not just for Alfie!). As I write this, the thought occurs that super fans can sometimes be categorised by their willingness to go and do whatever their favourite artist asks or mentions…I leave that with you for later discussion.
One of the joys of my musical education with Alfie has been finding out about extremely talented musicians who I would almost certainly never have heard of otherwise. These include Laura Wright and John Owen-Jones who I have had the pleasure of interviewing and the awesome Al Vosper, Emilia Mitiku and Michael Boe. They all produce the sort of music I have always listened to but I am absolutely sure their work would have passed me by without Alfie.
As always, I would love to hear about your musical education with Alfie – what do you now listen to that you didn’t before, or perhaps you have been drawn back to something you haven’t listened to for years? Leave me a comment in the box!
I’ll leave you with one of my favourite songs from the Storyteller tour, Jimi Hendrix’s Angel (thanks to Linda W for sharing):
Regular readers and twitter users will know that we are currently running a light hearted poll to find out which “look” of Alfie’s we prefer: to the chagrin of some fans, the suit look is currently winning.
This somewhat inevitably led us back to the equally light hearted subject of Alfie Boe as Rear of the Year 2015, something we last visited in October 2014. At this point I must admit that I am usually against voting in these sorts of competitions, but as this poll demonstrates perfect equality due to the fact that men and women are both featured, I’ll let it go…and vote multiple times! Anyone else who will admit to throwing their principles out the window when it comes to Alfie? To help you along here is Alfie in Nottingham on the Storyteller tour (right at the beginning for the best shots!):
This should also keep the tight jeans brigade happy! You know who you are!
When I first started this blog, back on a wordpress site in July 2013, I was happy to hit 100 visitors – the fact that I knew them all didn’t matter one iota. However, this blogging thing is just a little bit addictive and once I started, I couldn’t stop. The longer I went on, the more I blogged and the more I blogged, the more visitors came along and that’s when I made the scary decision to move from a purely wordpress blog to my own site. That was almost a year ago now and things have moved on somewhat!
When I moved to this current site, I had some targets in mind: how often to blog, to do some interviews, to feature some fan stories, to engage with as many Alfie Boe fans as possible and to share my passion with as many other fans as possible. One of my targets was to attract the same amount of visitors to the new site as visited the old site – that happened in the first 3 months of transferring! (Not bad considering the stats don’t transfer over, you have to start again).
Then, I had a new number in my head: 30,000 hits. Don’t ask my why I chose that particular number, it just popped into my head, same as pretty much everything else blog related pops into my head!
So thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has visited this site since May 2014 – each and every one of you is appreciated. Especial thanks to everyone who has been with me since the beginning – you know who you are and I love you all.
And now we’re on our way to the next target – so spread the word! Sharing is caring so tweet and share on Facebook as many times as you like!
And don’t forget, if you want to see something on the blog – just leave me a comment or contact me here.
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Back in November 2014 I asked “How Did You Find Alfie Boe” and I’m pleased to say that lots of you responded, being only too pleased to tell me how and when you first heard that beautiful voice. A few of you have been on board Alfie’s musical train right since the very beginning – and by that I mean since he was singing locally in Lancashire! One of his many nephews and nieces even filled in the survey although I don’t know which one! One respondent had followed him since he was appearing regularly in opera and another couple since his first album, Classic FMPresents. Other reasons given were his 2007 appearance on Parkinson, other TV appearances, Desert Island Discs, through friends, surfing youtube, through hearing David Miller of Il Divo talk about Alfie and his performance at the Diamond Jubilee concert in 2012.
However, like most of us Alfie fans these days, the vast majority (82%) of the respondents found Alfie through LesMiserables. Of those 82%, just over half first saw and heard Alfie on a PBS 25th anniversary promotion and the others saw him either live or on the DVD of that concert. This is what one smitten fan said
Saw him on PBS in Florida, USA in March 2011 singing Jean Valjean role and stopped in my tracks when hearing that voice. Watched the whole O2 Les Misarables concert and then had to find out who this wonderful tenor is. YouTubed him and listened and read everything I could find on him. The Alfie and Matt Lucas video Nessun Dorma with his hands in his pockets was what clinched him for me. Joined his Facebook page and his own web page and since have met many wonderful fans of his who over the last 3 years have become good friends. All this from that one O2 performance.
After finding out how and when fans found Alfie, I then wanted to find out when they made their first Alfie related purchase, be it CD, DVD etc. I admit that I was expecting most responses to be “immediately” or very quickly, given the devotion shown to Alfie by fans. However, I was slightly surprised to find that although two thirds of responses indicated that a purchase was made either the same day or next day, the next highest response was months, at least 6-12. In three cases there was a wait of at least a year and one waited for 3.5 years before making up (her?) mind to buy a CD. Incidentally, the length of time before making a purchase and considering yourself to be “Boed” does not match up; with the exception of the Lancashire locals and the fan waiting 3.5 years, every single respondent considered themselves “Boed” immediately.
The survey then went on to ask which albums fans had in their collection. For this survey, I only considered Alfie’s albums released under his own name (not including Serenata which was released after the survey) and the collaboration with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Home for theHolidays. The rest of his recording career can be found on the Alfie Boe Discography. The results are:
Classic FM Presents – 61% of respondents own this
La Passione – 82%
Onward – 72%
Love Was A Dream – 69%
Bring Him Home – 98%
Alfie – 95%
Storyteller – 95%
Trust – 90%
Home for the Holidays – 37%
As you can see, the most owned albums are the Decca ones released since the Les Mis connection although LaPassione is the most popular album of Alfie’s back catalogue. It occurs to me as I sit writing these results up, that I should have asked in which order these albums were purchased; it would have been interesting to see how many people had La Passione before Les Mis. I suspect that like me, the answer would be not many, otherwise Alfie would surely not have contemplated becoming a personal trainer for the SLC police.
DVD ownership is something else again – this time, there were only four choices as only two tours have been filmed:
Les Mis 25th concert – 96% own this
Bring Him Home tour – 83%
Storyteller tour – 75%
Home for the Holidays – 43%
Perhaps the relatively high amount of people owning the DVD of Home for the Holidays reflects the low amount owning it on CD (they don’t see the need to have it twice), otherwise the completely predictable result is that Les Mis is the most owned DVD. Of course this was expected, given that 82% of us found Alfie that way to start with. This is also borne out by 66% of those owning it citing it as their favourite of the DVD’s. Storyteller comes next, followed by Bring Him Home and Home for the Holidays again bringing up the rear.
Those of you who completed the survey will remember I also asked you which album you preferred – to find out the answer, you’ll have to be a subscriber!
Just add your email details to the box on the right of the page and you’ll receive the password to the relevant blog post – plus an email containing links to 4 Alfie photos not available in the gallery.
The quote above comes from Alfie Boe who is endlessly asked about his broad musical choices and indeed, this love of and willingness to sing as many genres of music as possible, has gained him many fans. It should be noted however, that this all encompassing approach to music has sometimes meant that critics and some fans are a little confused by Alfie’s career! More to come of that in a later post.
Fans of Alfie know that one of his longest standing musical influences is the King himself, Elvis Presley. In his autobiography, My Story, Alfie mentions that he first started listening to Elvis through his brother Joe who was a big fan; he remains a fan to this day, choosing Burning Love as one of his tracks on James Watt’s Radio Stoke One on One interview in November 2014. I’m particularly happy about this as it’s one of my favourite Elvis tracks – would love to hear Alfie sing this! Are there any other Elvis songs that you would like to hear Alfie sing? Let me know in the form below:
Back in October, I asked you what your favourite Alfie Boe singing Elvis song was and this was the list you came up with:
The first video is from Car Fest South when Alfie returned to his West London Karaoke Championship winning song Suspicious Minds to the unconfined joy of the entire crowd including Chris Evans – what a moment. Really glad that If I Can Dream made the list as it meant I could choose one of my favourite Storyteller tour videos (showcasing the incredible talents of Seweuse and Lucy on backing vocals). This song also gave me one of my favourite Alfie moments with my 8yo son: with my iPod on shuffle one day, Elvis singing If I Can Dream came on and 8yo asked who was singing. When I replied Elvis, he looked totally confused and said “but why is he singing one of Alfie’s songs” – my work is complete LOL.
Would love to hear your Alfie / Elvis moments, leave me a comment! You will all have to go a long way to better Cecelia’s Elvis moment – a few years ago (!) at the tender age of 5 she was on holiday when she met the King himself and got a kiss from him!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How fantastic is that?????
I’ll leave you with Elvis and Burning Love:
Enjoy Alfie singing Elvis on the Storyteller DVD :
It was with an intense feeling of anticipation that I embarked on the journey to Newcastle to see the first show of Alfie Boe’s UK Tour…and it’s safe to say that I was not disappointed! Straight off, I’m going to say that although Sol3 Mio were great, I’m not going to mention them any further here – look out for further blogs.
Alfie, together with his band, started out with stripped down songs from Serenata – the way that Alfie has always wanted to play them. SerenataCeleste was majestic and My Heart is Yours felt hugely emotional for both audience and Alfie. Seamlessly moving into songs from LaPassione (Parlami D’Amore Mariu), there was an audible sigh of anticipation from the audience when Alfie announced Caruso. This turned out to be a humdinger of a number, especially when Alfie’s voice rose to a crescendo and the backdrop curtain fell to reveal the orchestra. Very effective.
Musical theatre featured heavily on Alfie’s first two Decca albums and he returned to this repertoire last night. Come What May, Wheels of aDream and Being Alive were powerhouse performances and made an excellent intro to the Les Mis section and an outstanding rendition of Bring Him Home. A standing ovation duly followed. Leading into this, Richard Causon played a very effective Do You Hear the People Sing on accordion and got a fair portion of the audience singing along; this could have been encouraged more and perhaps will be in a bigger audience.
One of the most talked about parts of this tour was whether or not Alfie would sing any operatic arias – if you are a fan of his early albums you will be thrilled to find out that accompanied just by Richard Causon on piano, Alfie sang a medley of Recondita Armonia and Nessun Dorma which was simply outstanding. Goosebumps time. However, as wonderful as the sound was, the applause was slightly more muted than perhaps could have been expected due to the fact that we weren’t actually sure when Alfie had finished singing! Recondita Armonia went straight into Nessun Dorma and so were half expecting that a third aria would follow. A few of us were on the verge of standing up to applaud but weren’t sure and then of course the moment had gone. Thanks Linda for sharing this:
At this point, I should probably mention that although Alfie’s stage patter was still there, there was much less talk as there was a whole lot of singing!
After a short break (at this point, it was most noticeable that it was the first show as there were a couple of lengthy pauses for set movements) Alfie and the band returned to the stage for Trust and Storyteller songs. Bridge Over Troubled Water gave way to Trust and Keep Me in YourHeart...I confess to being a little hot and bothered over the “buttons on your blouse” moment… We then returned to where we started with more Serenata. Chitarra Romana started us off and we then enjoyed Luna Malinconia, Mamma,Volare, Mambo Italiano and Buona Sera where the main performance ended. We were encouraged to dance during this last part (only where our seats were) and Alfie had us all blowing kisses to him during Buona Sera, and yes, he did reciprocate.
The encore brought an acapella version of Danny Boy which showcased Alfie’s superb vocal abilities (and I don’t normally like this song) but I loved it last night. The final song of the night was a fabulous Glory Glory Hallelujah from Trust – and Alfie sent us off in style.
Overall, all the fans I spoke to thought the show was absolutely amazing, Alfie at his best, something for everyone and quite possibly his best ever concert. Writing this now, I am reliving it all over again and I definitely agree – Alfie was simply out of this world. Having said that, it will be interesting to see how the show goes in Leeds on Friday when the teething difficulties with the staging etc. have been ironed out.
If you don’t have tickets, go and get them now – you won’t be disappointed!
I can’t believe you don’t have Serenata yet but if not, click on the image to order:
