When I was little, I loved Sarah Brightman. Loved her. Primarily because I was a musical-theater nerd who didn't really care about the actual quality of the musical (hence: saw Cats three times), and I saw Sarah as the original Christine in Phantom of the Opera, which then-hubby Andrew Lloyd-Webber wrote just for her, and I loved it because she was so pretty with her hair and the costumes and the yearning and all that. Plus, in England they often (or at least used to) release songs from hit musicals onto the pop charts. So in addition to being on the West End, Sarah was also all over my very favorite show EVER, Top Of The Pops (rest in peace, little buddy), and I was constantly presented with opportunities to watch the video of the musical's title song, in which a masked man boats a beautifully dressed Sarah across a dry-ice river while they sing about how the Phantom of the Opera invades your mind. It was all very romantic. Never mind that the boater was a man in a mask that was a) strangely not the same mask they use in the musical, but some sort of red and gold full-face version that would be more at home in my nightmares, and b) said masked man was psychotic and wanted to lock her up in a basement. Although when you're 9, there's also something very romantic about being locked in a dungeon while you happen to look gorgeous and can make a man weep with your perfect voice, while the rest of the world ceases to turn on its axis until you are found. Hot.
Ahem. Anyway. There are still things I love about Sarah Brightman. Like, I'm pretty sure she's had some good plastic surgery over the years, and she divorced AL-W after getting what she needed out of him, which is good because otherwise she might have been associated with things like Sunset Boulevard.
But what I find most charming about her is her modesty and sense of occasion.
Scarlet platform stripper shoes and a dress made from denuding Big Bird's equally gigantic redheaded half-brother? Oh, Sarah, when will you get a little confidence and stop living life as a wallflower?
