by John McShane
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE WORLD
AT HER FEET
Piers Morgan looked straight at the camera and announced: ‘Together for the very first time… please welcome Elaine Paige and Susan Boyle!’
It was the evening of 13 December 2009, just eight months after that Britain’s Got Talent audition in Glasgow had been screened, and Susan Boyle’s world had changed forever.
At the audition, there had been laughter and eyebrows raised in surprise that this unknown woman had even dared to mention her wish to emulate Elaine Paige. Yet here they were, about to share a stage together. And it was on a show devoted to Susan, not Elaine Paige!
Morgan was right; it was the first and long-awaited teaming of the two – one an iconic figure, a living-legend of the musical stage, the other a woman who had brought a new meaning to the phrase ‘ Showbiz Sensation’.
From the first moment Susan had captured the imagination of the world, Paige had expressed an interest in singing with her. And now, at last, it was to happen. The song they were to sing was ‘I Know Him So Well’, a number that Paige had had a massive hit with years before when she recorded it with Barbara Dickson.
From the musical Chess, the song had a superb pedigree. Not only were Paige and Dickson two of the most respected women singers in the business, the number was written by Tim Rice and the Abba pair Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, men with impeccable track-records of creating popular music masterpieces. Many stars had performed it in the past, including Barbra Streisand and Whitney Houston, and it had even been the subject of a merciless spoof by comediennes Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.
This was no tongue-in-cheek approach, of course, as Elaine Paige, looking stunning on television that Sunday evening in a shimmering blue dress, began singing the opening verse of the bittersweet song, a dialogue between the estranged wife and the mistress of a chess champion. As Susan, looking chic in a full-length rich-brown dress, began to take part in the song and walked across the stage to join her, the audience at the London Studios applauded instinctively. For over three minutes the pair harmonised, the song’s Abba roots showing strongly, and when it ended they embraced each other. As Susan looked downwards, Paige whispered comfortingly in her ear as the audience cheered. Susan blew her a little kiss.
Piers Morgan was moved to say, ‘I am not actually sure who was the most excited there, but it was probably me.’
Susan sang two other solo songs, ‘Who I Was Born To Be’ and ‘Cry Me A River’ that evening, before finishing, inevitably, with ‘I Dreamed A Dream’. Unlike that day in Glasgow a lifetime earlier, she was not alone on stage this time. Around her she had the cast from Les Misérables and there she stood, centre-stage of this massive production, the centrepiece of the most successful musical of all time.
Ten million viewers tuned in to watch the hour-long special on ITV and when the show aired in the US, on the TV Guide Network, it became the highest rated television special in its history.
Given the millions of words that had been written about her and the countless hours of radio and television air time she’d had, it seemed unlikely that there would be anything new that could be said about her. Nevertheless, there was some intriguing information aired that night about how she had been received and perceived that day in Glasgow.
Declan Donnelly said, ‘We first saw Susan up in Glasgow, she kind of wasn’t really chatting to anybody just sitting alone in a corner. So we didn’t really take that much notice of her. We kind of sent her on stage and then if I’m honest with you our thoughts turned to what we were going to have for lunch.’
Anthony McPartlin had a similar memory. ‘We thought, “Ah here we go, another one of those. We’ve got another one of those.” Susan was nervous, she was definitely nervous.’
During the show, in which Morgan presented Susan with a triple platinum record for selling over a million copies of her album, Simon Cowell also discussed his feelings that day. ‘I could actually feel the audience behind me, beginning to get restless, you feel it. They smelled blood, seriously. Within about five seconds of her singing I felt this unbelievable change.
‘That was the moment where I thought if she can hit the chorus, this song is going to change her life forever. I could feel it. What I felt during and after the song I don’t think I’ve ever felt at any audition in my life. There was something magical about that audition.’
Talking about her semi-final appearance, with its faltering start, he said, ‘She couldn’t quite get the top of the song right and for any singer, particularly somebody like her without any experience of live shows, it throws you. Then the first crack appeared. I asked to see her before the final went out. I just cleared the dressing room and said, “I want to talk to you Susan. You don’t have to do this.” She said, “Simon I’ve lived all my life on my own, I’ve dreamed all my life about being a singer this is the one shot and I want to do this.” I said, “You’re the red hot favourite, which for me means there is a chance you may not win. How are you going to deal with that?” She said, “I still want to enter.”’
And when Diversity were announced as the winner? ‘Normally I’d look at the winners, this time I’m looking over to my right and I saw a glimmer of fear there: “no one’s gonna want me anymore.” This was the lowest point we’d ever reached. Where suddenly you go we have a responsibility here, and that’s the point where you question yourself, the show and “have we ruined this person’s life?”’ he said.
‘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 aw
ay 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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