Authors: John McShane
‘After that tension, however, there had been the triumph of America and the album sales. It’s a great human story. Without any hype or without any tricks it’s all about her.
‘Was Susan Boyle right to dream a dream? Yes. Susan Boyle was good for all of us. She was certainly good for me because I look at me in that first audition and I saw something I didn’t particularly like, which was incredibly judgmental. So I think Susan is going to help an awful lot of people who didn’t have the confidence to do this.’
A friend of Susan’s since childhood, Lorraine Campbell, who had come to London to help Susan cope in those frantic days before the final, also spoke on the programme. Ms Campbell – who said that when she was young Susan had been ‘a beautiful looking girl who had beautiful black curly hair… always the classy one’ – also helped explain why it all temporarily became too much for Susan.
‘She couldn’t cope with the paparazzi, that was her biggest problem. She couldn’t cope with motorbikes
chasing her, journalists undercover in her hotel. These were the pressures that Susan was put under.’
Perhaps Ant summed up the entire phenomenon when he said: ‘Where you live, look like, where you’re from, it can still happen for you if you believe and you’ve got the talent.’
And boy, was it ‘happening’ for Susan by this time. Barely a day went by without an update on her record sales around the world and such was the mania for news about her that the hugely popular
Sun
even devoted a large article to her front door, a white mock-Georgian affair, and how it had become one of the most famous doors in the world!
By the end of the first week in December the album had sold 3.3 million copies worldwide and she had reportedly earned as much in two weeks as previous winner Paul Potts had made in two years, an estimated £5 million. She decided to spend some of that money – by buying a new fridge and a burgundy leather three-piece suite for her home in Blackburn.
On the day of transmission of the Piers Morgan-hosted show the album was still top of the charts in both Britain and America, although she had to call off a planned visit to Canada to appear at Toronto’s Waterfall Stage on 21 December. ‘Unfortunately Susan will no longer be visiting Canada at the end of this year. The trip will be rescheduled for 2010 to allow more time between international promotional trips,’ a spokesman said.
The artist she had replaced at the top of the charts in America could hardly have been more different from Susan. Lady Gaga, the exotic singer/performance artist, was a musical, and physical, universe away from Susan. Her album ‘The Fame Monster’ was pushed from the top slot in the States by Susan but she said, ‘I love Susan Boyle, she is my woman of the year – I don’t know if we could work together, but never say never. Our styles are different. It would be great to work with somebody of that talent. She has achieved more in this year than most artists will in a lifetime. This time last year nobody even knew who she was and now she is knocking the world’s most established artists off the album and singles charts. I have watched the clip of her singing on
BGT
a thousand times and every time I see Simon Cowell’s face, it makes me laugh out loud. He thinks he knows everything but even he wasn’t expecting that.’
On 15 December came a double-whammy: two announcements that showed the impact she had made. YouTube announced its most watched videos for the first time since its 2005 inception – and Susan’s
BGT
appearance was put into its true, and astonishing, perspective. It had attracted 120 million views around the world, more than the next three most-watched put together.
The second spot, with more than 37 million views, was held by ‘David After Dentist’, which featured a 7-year-old boy recovering from some dental work that left
him feeling disoriented and wondering if he would ever feel normal again.
Third place, with 33 million views, went to ‘JK Wedding Entrance Dance’, which captured an elaborate routine orchestrated by Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz – flanked by their bridesmaids and groomsmen – just before their marriage.
A movie trailer for
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
attracted 31 million views, helped by co-stars Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, who had teenage girls swooning over them. But none of them could approach Susan’s popularity.
And there was massive news about her album
I Dreamed A Dream
, which was produced by Steve Mac, who had worked with a host of hit artists including Westlife, Ronan Keating and Charlotte Church. By the end of the year Susan had easily won top spot as album of the year in the UK with sales of more than 1.5 million copies in six weeks. It was a similar story in America where she was No. 1 on the
Billboard
album chart for a fifth consecutive week, notching up another 510,000 sales and making her the first artist in the 53-year history of the chart to have a debut album open No. 1 and stay in that position for the following four weeks. As the year drew to an end Susan had sold a total of 2,982,000 albums Stateside.
Australia, too, had succumbed to her appeal. In Christmas week she sold more copies of
I Dreamed A
Dream
than the other top five albums combined. She became the first artist in the country to sell over 100,000 copies for two consecutive weeks, and totalled 450,000 for the five weeks since it had been released.
It was the same story in the
Billboard
‘Pan-European’ charts, which showed it was the largest-selling album across the continent.
The rest of the world wasn’t immune either. Screaming fans, many of them clutching bouquets of flowers in welcome, greeted her when she landed at Tokyo airport to record a New Year’s Eve music special for Japanese television. Two men in the crowd even proposed to her.
‘There is so much affection for Susan. She is an idol to us, everyone wants to meet her,’ said fan Akiyama Hanako, 56, who had waited seven hours to see her. ‘I was near the front but got pushed aside when she appeared. One gentleman kept asking her to marry him over and over again. We have not seen scenes like it since the Beatles.’
In the midst of the travelling, Susan at least managed to spend the Christmas holidays back home in Blackburn. She who had been so eloquent about her torment as a youngster in the classroom, nevertheless found time during her spell back in snowy Scotland to visit two local schools. Bad weather prevented her from attending the cancelled nativity play at the Holy Family Primary School in Winchburgh, but she was determined not to let the children down so she went to their
Christmas party instead and danced with some of the excited youngsters and chatted to them about her music and about the school.
She also visited St. Kentigern’s Academy, where she had studied, when a £19-million extension and refurbishment was unveiled. Smartly dressed Susan, wearing a double-breasted military-style coat with gold buttons and a patterned dress, was given a tour of the new facilities and spoke to the staff and children. How strange to think that the woman who had been so troubled in her own childhood was now a VIP in the classroom. No wonder she proclaimed she was the happiest she’d ever been.
‘Christmas is a joyous time and this year I’ll be with my family and close friends and attending midnight mass to remember the true meaning,’ she said. ‘It will be a quiet time for reflection. I have so many cards my lounge is full of them and I can barely get in the door. Every one is so special and I’ve re-read them time and time again.
‘The album being so well received is humbling and I’m so very grateful. I hope that everyone is enjoying it.
‘It’s been an absolutely brilliant year and I can’t thank everyone enough for the support I’ve been given, not only here but around the world. I am the happiest I have ever been and truly enjoying myself. It’s been quite a year.’
Susan added, ‘God has been very important to me.’
Christmas Day was spent at her sister Bridie’s in Motherwell with other members of the family including
brothers John, 60, and James, 58, with Susan helping out in the kitchen. After unwrapping a present of slippers and a housecoat from 67-year-old Bridie, Susan put her album on, although she was too modest to sing along with it, and the family then tucked into a meal of vegetable soup, roast beef and trifle.
Even as her official website launched a ‘Susan Boyle Store’ – items for sale included T-shirts, a tote-bag and a hoodie all adorned with her image or the phrase ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ – Susan was reflecting on what gave her pleasure in her new life. Not surprisingly, it seemed much of it was the same as it had been before she climbed on board those six buses in the middle of a Scottish January to head towards the
BGT
audition.
Her favourite food was still fish and chips. She still practised singing most days, although she was now careful to rest her voice. She still listened to Michael Bublé, Elton John or ‘anybody who can make a really good record.’ And her ‘very, very favourite’ record was still ‘Puppy Love’ by Donny Osmond.
What will happen to Susan in the years to come? Only time will tell. The initial impact of that Glasgow audition and the YouTube frenzy it ignited must, inevitably, fade. What will not diminish – hopefully not for many years at least – will be the quality of that voice; as clear, light and joyous as a beautiful spring morning in Scotland, yet mature and knowledgeable in a way
only years of living a real life can account for. Nor will there be any diminution of the sheer happiness and pleasure she has given and will, no doubt, continue to give. But perhaps Susan’s own words about what might happen in the future and her thoughts for those who have come to know and love her, sum it up best:
‘Have I found, reached or achieved my dream? Well everybody never completely fulfills their dream. My dream is to make people happy and to go on making people happy for as long at it lasts, so it’s not really complete. It’s never complete without the fans.’
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First published in paperback in 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84454-962-7
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