Susan Boyle Biography

Susan Boyle was born in 1961 in West Lothian, Scotland, the youngest in a large family of nine children. An accident during her birth led to a deprivation of oxygen which resulted in the young Susan suffering from learning disabilities. She grew up bullied and taunted as a young child in school.

As a young woman, Susan possessed few marketable skills, except for an extraordinary untapped musical talent.  She took singing lessons and acting classes, and sang in the local church choir.  A series of auditions and early recordings brought her little success, although she prepared a demo in 1998 which included “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” “Killing Me Softly,” and “Cry Me A River.” Exhausting her own savings to record and distribute the demo, she sent it to a number of talent competitions, television stations, and record companies, all to no avail.

Susan Boyle did frequently win local singing competitions, though, which gave her the confidence to audition for Britain’s Got Talent.  A successful first audition for the show in Glasgow led to the now world-famous performance at the Clyde Auditorium, with a rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. The video of the performance was viewed by tens of millions on YouTube, and the firestorm of support for the singer grew beyond anything anyone, including Susan, had ever anticipated. Susan Boyle went all the way to the finals on Britain’s Got Talent, performing “Memory” from the musical Cats as her last song. Although the clear favorite to win, she took second place to a dance troupe. The loss marked the start of Susan Boyle’s career, however, and the invitations for contracts and performances poured in. 

Susan Boyle’s debut album, I Dreamed a Dream, was released in 2009, and went on to become the best-selling pre-sales album in Amazon.com’s history. The album features covers of the title track, “You’ll See,” “Cry Me a River,” “Wild Horses,” and other classics that Boyle herself selected. The album stayed at the top of the charts in the United States for six weeks, and in Italy it broke records as the first album of the month by a non-Italian artist, ever.

Since her extraordinary rise to fame, Susan Boyle has released a number of albums: The Gift (2010), Someone to Watch Over Me (2011), and Standing Ovation: The Greatest Songs from the Stage (2012.) She was nominated for Grammys for Best Pop Vocal Album in 2011, and Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2012. Her meteoric rise from obscurity despite innumerous obstacles continues to serve as an inspiration to many.