Susan Boyle may have dreamed a dream, but it was definitely turned to shame in more ways than one. Her tragic story is enough to make even the hardest of us shed a tear.
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00:00Susan Boyle may have dreamed a dream, but it was definitely turned to shame in more ways than one.
00:05Her tragic story is enough to make even the hardest of us shed a tear.
00:09Susan Boyle's health issues actually began before birth.
00:13Her mother, Bridget, was 45 when she became pregnant with her in 1960.
00:17The risk of maternal death was so high that doctors advised termination.
00:20Bridget, staunchly religious, carried the child to term. Complications developed
00:25during the pregnancy, and Bridget was diagnosed with preeclampsia,
00:28a variety of high blood pressure that can immediately threaten the life of an unborn child.
00:32Susan told The Guardian,
00:33"...we both nearly died, and she was told I'd suffer brain damage as a result of being starved
00:38of oxygen at birth." Subsequently, the singer grew up believing that her medically chaotic
00:42birth was the source of her learning issues. In 2012, when Susan was in her 50s, she sought
00:47out a specialist to get a more accurate picture. Turns out, her bouts of depression and mood shifts
00:52and her difficulty with social situations all stem from autism. She told The Guardian,
00:56"...I thought I had a more serious illness and couldn't function properly.
00:59Now I have a clearer understanding of what's wrong,
01:02and I feel relieved and a bit more relaxed about myself."
01:04"...I've got another case."
01:06"...Oh, come on, then. Can I get you a cuddle?"
01:09"...What have you got?"
01:10"...Your beauty. I've been waiting for this for ages."
01:13Raised in Blackburn, Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s, Susan was the youngest child of
01:18Bridget and Patrick Boyle. Patrick had anger problems and acted out with violence.
01:22Unfortunately, it was Susan who bore the brunt of his outbursts while she was young.
01:26It took years for her to process the experience. She told the Daily Mail,
01:30"...my father, though a very good man, had a temper. He showed it to me and he hurt me.
01:34He didn't mean to, but I held on to this for years, and when he was dying, I had to let it go."
01:39Relatives believe that Patrick developed his tendencies toward violence and abuse after
01:43his time spent fighting in World War II. Patrick also prevented Susan from pursuing a romantic life.
01:48At the age of 25, she was in a relationship with a man until her father ended it on her behalf.
01:53She explained,
01:54"...my dad didn't like him. He said he wasn't right for me. I was in love with him,
01:57but he made someone else pregnant soon after. My dad decided that particular
02:01boy was not for me and I was too immature to handle a relationship."
02:05Sadly, the emotional and physical abuse she suffered didn't stop with her home life.
02:09Throughout her childhood in Scotland, Boyle dealt with frequent bullying from her classmates.
02:13As a child, she was diagnosed with epilepsy,
02:15a neurological issue that was often poorly understood at the time. She told the Daily Mail Weekend,
02:21They called me touchy. At school, I used to faint a lot."
02:24That earned some torment, as did the idea that Boyle was significantly less intelligent than
02:28her peers. Classmates gave her a nickname of a derisive, racist nature, as well as one that
02:33targeted her learning disabilities and perceived lack of intelligence. Some local teenagers would
02:37intimidate her and even throw rocks and paper strips that they'd lit on fire. At least she
02:42sometimes fought back, as she said in the ITV documentary Susan Boyle, An Unlikely Superstar.
02:47One day I got fed up with it and had a good sit and piss.
02:51You fought back?
02:52I could fight back when I needed to."
02:54Boyle's triumphant, historic performance on Britain's Got Talent in 2009 wasn't the first
02:59time the singer tried to use reality TV to boost her musical career. More than a decade before that
03:04successful attempt, she auditioned for another televised talent show, where she was summarily
03:08mocked by the host in front of a large crowd. English comedian and presenter Michael Barrymore
03:12hosted a short-lived show in 1995 called My Kind of People, where he visited towns in Britain and
03:18invited locals to show off their talents. When the roadshow came to Olympia Shopping Center in
03:22East Kilbride, Scotland, Boyle tried twice to land a spot on the show. Once, while Boyle tried to
03:27sing I Don't Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar in front of spectators and
03:30other hopefuls, she endured Barrymore lobbying jokes at her expense the entire time. At one
03:35point, he got on the ground and tried to peer underneath Boyle's skirt. She lightly kicked
03:39him and he kissed her. And after all that, Boyle wasn't selected to perform on TV.
03:45In the late 1990s, Boyle experienced excessive personal setbacks,
03:49one in her romantic life and the other a profound loss that reshaped her existence.
03:53During her first slot on Britain's Got Talent, Boyle described herself as such.
03:58I've never been bodied. Never been kissed.
04:01Oh, shame.
04:03She later admitted, however, that the latter statement wasn't entirely true,
04:07as she'd been in relationships before. She told the Daily Mail,
04:10I had a boyfriend, John, who worked in an office. He asked me to marry him after seven weeks,
04:15although we'd only ever had a peck on the cheek. Unfortunately, John subsequently broke off the
04:19engagement, and the relationship ended. Boyle said,
04:22It made me sad in a way. It makes you feel unattractive. You feel that life is passing
04:26you by. And if that isn't sad enough, Boyle's father, Patrick, was diagnosed with multiple
04:31serious health problems in his advanced age, including respiratory issues, a form of cancer,
04:35and Alzheimer's disease. He died in 1999 at the age of 83. Susan recalled,
04:41There was no change in my family until then. At a time like that, you can either be strong
04:45or go to pieces. I'd lost a father, but my mother had lost a lifelong partner.
04:50Boyle was raised as part of a large family in Scotland.
04:53Ten people sharing one bathroom. That used to be quite crazy.
04:56That used to be fighting in the morning, I can assure you.
04:59Her eight older siblings eventually all moved out, but she didn't. After the death of her father,
05:04the future star stayed behind to care for her aged mother. For about eight years,
05:08she served as her mother's live-in primary caregiver. When her mother died in 2007 at
05:12age 91, Boyle grew despondent. In the immediate aftermath of the death, she refused to leave
05:17her house for several days at a time and wouldn't answer the phone or allow visitors.
05:21Her mother's encouragement and death would inspire Boyle's next steps. She told The Guardian,
05:26I felt a part of me had died with her, and I was also in danger of losing our family home
05:30because I wasn't working. I was totally lost, but then I remembered how she always told me to
05:35follow what makes me happy. Boyle's 2009 audition for Britain's Got Talent was the first time she'd
05:40sung in public since her mother died. She told The Times,
05:43I was left really upset because of the bereavement I had and decided to give up singing.
05:47Up until then, I was singing in the church choir and doing karaoke regularly,
05:50but I just didn't feel up to it after that.
05:53Despite being probably the most famous act to ever emerge from any iteration of the Got Talent
05:58franchise, Susan didn't win her season of Britain's Got Talent. She came in second
06:02to a dance troupe called Diversity.
06:05Diversity!
06:11Immediately after the grueling, weeks-long televised contest came to an end in May 2009,
06:16Boyle voluntarily checked into The Priory, a mental health treatment facility in London.
06:20She officially sought help to deal with exhaustion, but underwent an evaluation
06:24following reports that her behavior and mood had drastically changed after intense and invasive
06:28media scrutiny. It was such a sensitive matter that the UK's Press Complaints Commission asked
06:33local news outlets to refrain from sharing any details of her health crisis at the urging of
06:37her management. Susan explained the ordeal to the Daily Mail,
06:41Everything had built up and I was exhausted. You have to understand,
06:44my life ceased to be normal when Britain's Got Talent went live. There were a lot of press
06:48people outside my door, a lot of television people, a lot of people who wanted a piece of me.
06:52She further described the frightening experience, saying,
06:55I had to draw my blinds and even after that they started hammering on my door. I didn't have any
06:59security then. It was just me and one of the BGT production team who had been sent up to stay
07:04nearby for me. In early March 2020, Boyle played a rigorous mini-tour of eight concerts and 11 days
07:10at major theaters in Scotland, Wales, and England. Those would mark her last concerts for years,
07:15and she didn't record an album during this time period either. In June 2023,
07:19she returned to public life with an encore performance of
07:22I Dreamed a Dream on Britain's Got Talent. She shared the reason why she hadn't been seen in
07:26so long and why the performance was so important to her, and admitted that she'd suffered a minor
07:30stroke but wasn't about to let that stop her. And I felt like crazy to go back on stage and
07:36I have done it. Well, we are thrilled that you have.
07:39After the show, Boyle gave more details about the stroke and her lengthy 15-month recovery
07:44to regain some of her temporarily lost abilities. She wrote on her Instagram page,
07:48For the past year I have worked so hard to get my speech and singing back,
07:52with the sole aim of being able to sing on stage again.
07:55Boyle comports herself with a certain level of dignity and reserve, and she prefers to sing
07:59show tunes and standards, including one of the best covers of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah,
08:03to an appreciative audience with conservative taste. That's why it was so shocking and
08:07potentially embarrassing when an internet provocateur took aim at the singer by
08:11uploading some incongruously edgy material to her Spotify channel. In September 2023,
08:16Boyle's fans and followers on the music streaming giant noticed that the best-selling singer had
08:21apparently uploaded her first new recording in several years. That song is presented across
08:26album art of pink leopard print, Anal Queen. After the incident started to trend on social media,
08:31Spotify quickly removed the song and dismissed it as a hoax.
08:34It's believed that the title choice referred to a PR disaster from years earlier.
08:38In 2012, Boyle's promotions team tried to get social media attention for the release of the
08:43singer's standing ovation, The Greatest Songs from the Stage, with a virtual listening event
08:47it promoted with the hashtag SusanAlbumParty. All those words on their own are innocent,
08:52but jumbled together and read differently, they inadvertently formed a dirty joke,
08:56leading to a thorough roasting of the singer and her team on Twitter, now known as X, of course.
09:01If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse,
09:04contact the ChildHelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child,
09:091-800-422-4453, or contact their live chat services.