Oprah Winfrey‘s name resonates with power in the rich landscape of media history. Her voice was a cultural event on American television for more than 20 years, a habit of millions of viewers who watched her discuss personal and universal topics. But even icons have their good times, their bad times and their choices that, looking back, make them cringe. In a recent interview on Keke Palmer’s podcast, the media mogul had to face one of those moments and, as always, she was as vulnerable and self-deprecating as a possible. It was her short, unsuccessful career as a professional singer, which she now freely admits is one of the “real” mistakes of her otherwise carefully planned career.
The conversation flowed when Palmer, who has made her podcast a go-to place for celebrity interviews, started humming a tune familiar to Winfrey that took her right back to ’98. It was the theme song from her iconic TV talk show and it began each episode with Winfrey’s voice in a gospel-tinged tune, for one season. Winfrey’s response was quick and significant as Palmer sang a line from the song. But “Girl, please,” she said, her voice laced with weight that she had given many years to contemplate and is still haunted by. “That’s one of my career blunders.” It was granted with no sense of remorse, but with the wisdom that only experience has provided in traversing the heights of greatness and the lows of bad judgment.
In the meantime, Palmer, always the good host, tried to assure her inquisitive guest that it was no accident that she had been chosen to perform the music. However, Winfrey wasn’t having any of it. This woman who has spent her life studying human behaviour, including her own, continued the task of unravelling the tale behind the iconic season of her programme. The account opened up a fascinating nexus of uncertainty in the professional world, consultation in the spiritual realm and, finally, a lesson in being limited. In its own way, it was a masterclass in how even the most successful among us can sometimes ever get into a place we simply don’t belong in because of ambition or external pressures.
Winfrey told the story of how her singing career came to be, and the tale became almost mythic, with the spiritual introspection characteristic of her public image. She was facing a big choice at the time which would affect the future of her career. Of course, whether to keep going with “The Oprah Winfrey Show” or to end it was something that loomed constantly on her mind, as it will do with any program that has been running for as long as has been the case with this show. At the time of meditation, she said, she had a conversation with Jesus. She was told in no uncertain terms to carry on. This spiritual validation, instead of giving her a sense of security, actually launched a creative impulse that would take her on the musical journey.
After that divine conversation, Winfrey’s thoughts went to a song that had always been meaningful to her. It was an old spiritual, of the type of deeply rooted American folk hymn that contains in it the echoes of generations past. The message of the song was in perfect harmony with her situation and she started to see how it would make a perfect theme song for her show. The line that meshed with her imagination was simple, yet evocative, the line that she sang to Palmer during their conversation, “I think I’m gonna run on. It was a statement of determination, of going on with life despite all the challenges, and it felt like it summed up all the emotions she was experiencing at that turning point. She didn’t fully grasp, however, the huge difference between spiritual resonance and vocal ability.
It was decided, and the groundwork was laid for a new period of the show, with Winfrey’s voice on each of the show’s daily airings. Like she did everything! She didn’t even pass up asking her vocal coaches to help her so she could do it. Singing lessons entered her life, a rigorous effort at developing her speaking voice into a tune. It’s somewhat cute to see Oprah Winfrey, who already has so many of her acting chops in use, learning how to speak from a voice coach for a purpose that at the time felt like something she could never pull off on her own. It’s an expression of modesty, the desire to do something different or venture outside of your comfort zone, even if you aren’t sure what will happen.
Predictably, there was mixed reaction when the season debuted and Winfrey’s voice boomed out the opening lyrics of “Run On”. Some found the novelty of the sight of their dear host in a new light to be charming. The vocal part was, in a generous interpretation, a throwaway element that didn’t really advance the narrative of what the show was about. The song was the theme for only one season of the show, and Winfrey and her staff realized it was not an effective strategy for the long run. The musical opening was dropped because it was realized, rather than because it was disliked, that sometimes there are inherent limitations that no practice and no good intentions can overcome. “When we realised that, I’m not a good singer, I can’t sing,” as she openly confessed on the podcast. It was a moment of clarity, it was also a sort of freedom when it deflated.
