It was an achievement, but it's not as if gospel weren't already popular; the New York City radio station WLIB ("Your Praise & Inspiration Station"), for example, has hundreds of thousands of listeners.
Politics has looked to Hollywood before for inspiration — take, for example, the Capra-like film tribute to Ronald Reagan for the 1984 Republican convention or "The Man From Hope," the triumph-of-the-human-spirit fable created for Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign by the television producer Harry Thomason.
You can track his inspirations, seeing, for example, that his discovery of Russian icons, during a visit to Shchukin in Moscow in 1911, informed a large confrontational painting of him and Amélie, "The Conversation" (1911).
His musical language was polyglot in its inspirations —"Transformations," for example, draws from Bach, Samuel Barber and the bossa nova, among other influences — but Susa wove them together into his own distinctive sound.
He also encouraged looking to nature for inspiration and for examples of good design.
He even confesses to looting unlikely sources for inspiration: one shot, for example, was pinched from Wim Wenders' 3D dance film Pina.
For example, inspiration equals romance.
Tintern Abbey, for example, inspiration to both Turner and Wordsworth, or Rievaulx, set in splendid Yorkshire isolation.
Nina Simone, for example, inspiration to Nick Cave and many others, does not sing as low as a male bass, but her contralto range and delivery would more than qualify her for this week's contenders.
