Journey

In less than three minutes, her life changed forever.

On January 21, 2009, Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old church volunteer from Scotland, stepped onstage to audition for a spot on England’s hit TV show Britain’s Got Talent . She stood before the audience, judges and television viewers and shared her dream—to be a professional singer.

Some people snickered. Others rolled their eyes. But when Susan belted out the first line of the Les Miserables anthem “I Dreamed a Dream,” jeers turned to cheers. Her showstopping performance, which has been viewed more than 120 million times on YouTube , captured people’s hearts and catapulted her to stardom.

“It was one of the most extraordinary moments of the entertainment world in 2009,” Oprah says.

Before this moment, however, Susan’s life was far from extraordinary.
When Susan was a baby, her parents were told not to expect much from Susan, the youngest of their nine children. She had been deprived of oxygen at birth, which left her with a slight disability.

Susan says she struggled to fit in throughout her childhood. “I didn’t make friends very easily. I couldn’t trust anybody, and when I did try to speak to people, they made fun of me,” she says. “So the only escape from all that, really, was music.”

It was Susan’s lifelong dream to be a professional singer, but when her mother died in 2007, she says she lost the will to sing. “The loneliness really set in,” she says. “I know that [my mother] meant me to do something with my life, but I didn’t know until I applied for the television program.”

To the shock of many loyal fans, Susan came in second place on Britain’s Got Talent, but that didn’t stop her debut album from reaching number one on the charts.

Since its release in November 2009, I Dreamed a Dream has sold more than 8 million copies worldwide, making it the biggest female debut of all time! “It’s astounding,” Susan says. “It’s very humbling, as well.”
Since becoming a worldwide sensation, Susan’s life—and look—have changed dramatically. “Before the audition, my life was kind of mundane, really. It was really routine, like everyone else’s,” she says. “But after the audition, people began recognizing me on the street, and I had begun to take myself a bit more seriously as a professional singer.”

Some people may not recognize Susan now that she’s working with hair stylists, makeup artists and wardrobe consultants. “My old look resembled a wee waif from Blackburn,” she says. “The new look is more professional, more polished.”

While Susan says she’s enjoying being in the spotlight now, fame took a toll early on. In June 2009, Susan spent three days in a London hospital, recuperating from exhaustion.

“There are two types of exhaustion. There’s exhaustion due to health and exhaustion due to work,” she says. “I like to be busy, so I was very exhausted because I worked. So I was fine. Absolutely fine. But it’s over with now. You get over that stage, and you just get on with your life. Don’t dwell on the past.”

Susan takes comfort in knowing she’s never alone. She says her late mother is always with her in spirit. “[My mother is] right here in this room. She would have been really proud of me,” she says. “I do feel there is a kind of presence. I do feel there is someone there who’s saying, ‘Susan, keep going.’ And that person is my mother.”

Be who you were meant

Posted By REV. ERIC STRACHAN

She appeared on “Oprah” this past week, and as we say, ‘there was hardly a dry eye in the place.’ Singing the song, “Who I Was Born To Be,” from her debut album, “I Dreamed A Dream,” Susan Boyle’s performance can only be described as riveting, sensational, phenomenal -you run out of superlatives in describing it.

That response to Boyle is nothing new. When she first appeared on “Britain’s Got Talent,” the UK version of “Canadian Idol,” the panel and audience who saw her come on stage made their pre-judgements, even before the first note came out of her mouth. Here was this “frumpy” 48 year-old, plain as Jane, chubby-cheeked spinster. “Gee!’ If you want to make it these days in the music industry as a woman you gotta have some sparkle, some glitz, show some flesh, be as sexy as “Beyonce,” as flirty as Lady Gaga or as outrageous as Kesha.” That’s the line. This Third Millenial audience were waiting to hear the matronly Boyle “squawk like a duck.” Weren’t they in for the biggest surprise of their life!

From the very moment the Catholic-born Susan Magdalane Boyle opened her mouth ’she knocked them dead.’ As one writer so aptly put it, “she managed to pick every hair from the back of your head and yank it to attention.” Boyle sang like a lark at the dawn with a voice that blew the audience right out of the water. Since that memorable moment back in April 11, 2009, Susan Boyle’s debut album, “I Dreamed A Dream,” has gone on to sell some eight million copies, becoming the fastest selling U.K. album of all time. Her appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent” has taken over 100 million hits on the Web. Being a Scot, I must confess, when I saw her debut album for sale at my local Christian bookseller I dashed in to get a copy. The CD is worth it just for the song “Who I Was Born To Be.” Do yourself a favour -if you’ve been shattered in life, disappointed, broken, if you’ve had dreams that you’ve pursued only to have seen them blown away with the wind, buy Susan Boyle’s album. There are some songs on it that are clearly great therapy for the disillusioned and wounded soul.

Boyle was born not far from where I used to spend my summers in Scotland, in a fairly small place called Blackburn, at the heart of the coal-mining industry in the nation. Her Dad was a miner. The youngest of 10 children, Susan was deprived of oxygen at birth and entered into infancy with some learning disabilities.

One can well imagine that Susan, the runt of the litter, would get all the hand-me-downs, and by the time the Boyle’s fed 10 mouths, there wouldn’t be too much left of a miner’s salary, so at school, where recess bullying was as much in vogue as it is today, the kids labelled her, “Susie Simple.” When she sings, “I Dreamed A Dream, ” from Les Miserables, you can detect the reference to some of these painful years of her life.

Let me pause here for a moment and move the focus from Susan Boyle to you. Tell me, did you have a dream as a kid, as a teenager, as a young man or woman? Do you still have a dream, but it’s vaporizing into oblivion, disappearing fast before your eyes?Maybe you’re growing up in a dysfunctional home, your Dad’s an alcoholic. Maybe it’s hard to sleep at night -yet you have dreams of a better day. Maybe the cold blight of adversity has walked through your front door, completely unannounced and left you reeling with the premature death of a child, a wife or a husband.

Can I tell you in the midst of the reality of your heartache, you can dream again. Maybe your engagement has been broken off, maybe you’ve been diagnosed with P.T.S.D. and when you look at yourself in the mirror, you see yourself as an emotional cripple. Maybe you’re in hospital, feeling miserable, awaiting a prognosis. Maybe you’re on drugs, and you can’t kick the habit.

Can I tell you that God’s a dreamer? He always has had dreams for you, since the very moment you exited from your mother’s womb, God has dreamed a dream for you.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” He says, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (The Bible, Jeremiah 29:11)

When Susan Boyle sung on “Oprah” this past week, she sung the words from “Who I Was Born To Be”: “And so here I am/Open arms and ready to stand/ I’ve got the world in my hands/ And it feels like my turn to fly.”

Some of you have been grounded for far too long. Disillusionment, discouragement and defeat have kept you on the tarmac of life. You were born to fly. I think the time is just about right for you to take off. You can be who you were born to be………………yes you can!

“A source close to Miss Boyle said she felt she was being pulled in different directions by her managers – Andy Stephens, who used to work with George Michael, U2’s former accountant Ossie Kilkenny and one of her nieces, Kirsty.

“The source added: “No wonder Susan may be a bit frazzled – it’s all a bit too much to take in.”

This above quote is from The Daily Mail, which is usually accurate enough in their sourcing of stories.

If this is the case then I’m very much afraid that Susan Boyle is not in good hands.

The incident at London Airport this week reflects badly on everyone. Clearly Susan is under enormous stress and pressure, zigzagging the globe: Japan on New Year’s, appearances in Britain, now back to America and so on. This may simply be too much pressure on her.

The expectations are enormous and increasingly unfair. She has delivered to her management and backers and then some. It hardly seems the decent thing to have her flying from pillar to post to achieve precisely what? A few more record sales?

Susan clearly has issues, anyone catapulted to worldwide fame from anonymity a year ago inevitably would have.  She has extra pressures because of a sheltered life and learning disabilities as a child. Exposing her full blast to world media scrutiny and a hectic travel schedule is not advisable.

This is no time to be showcasing her all over the world. What will her backers gain if she is unable to cope with all the demands on her?

Irish singer Enya is a worldwide phenomenon yet rarely leaves her Irish home. Her extraordinary voice carries her success. Susan Boyle could be a very similar phenomenon.

Personally I don’t care if she never appears on this side of the water again, as long as her extraordinary voice continues to captivate in the years ahead. In Susan’s case it is now clear that less is more. Management needs to learn that message.

Susan Boyle

Before she had the biggest-selling debut album in the history of the U.K. charts, frumpy Susan Boyle was YouTube’s darling.

In April, British television viewers watched the middle-aged Scottish woman astonish a live audience (and difficult-to-impress judge Simon Cowell) with a rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” on Britain’s Got Talent. Days later, YouTube users in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world wept for joy at the storybook success (however carefully crafted by the reality show’s producers) of the simple woman with the bushy eyebrows and crystal-clear voice.

Sure, she lost the final competition to some dancing kids. And she succumbed more than once to the emotional pressure that comes with sudden fame. But with her record selling well, she said she doesn’t want it to end.

Adding up the various posts on YouTube, the number of views of her first TV appearance hovers at about 100 million. With a statistic like that, she’s the most viral of them all, and no list of the year’s viral hits can exclude her.