Most Successful Musical Debut-Susan
Boyle sets world record
GLASGOW, Scotland, UK -- 48 year old church volunteer
Susan Margaret Boyle made an enormously successful stage
debut during a rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" from
Les Misérables in the first round of the third series of Britain's
Got Talent, which was viewed 110 million times online
in the first 10 days and 210 million times within the 1st
month-setting the world record for the Most
Successful Musical Debut.
According
to Visible
Measures, which tracks videos from YouTube, MySpace
and other video-sharing sites, all Susan Boyle-oriented videos
-- including clips of her television interviews and her recently
released rendition of "Cry Me a River," recorded 10 years
ago for a charity CD -- have
generated a total of 210 million views. Nearly 20
million of those views came overnight.
The most popular YouTube video submission of her
audition garnered nearly 2.5 million views in the first 72
hours. Within a week, the audition performance had been viewed
more than 66 million times, setting an online record. A total
of 103 million video views on 20 different websites was reached
within nine days.
When she appeared on the Britain's Got Talent
stage for the first time, the audience and the judges appeared
apprehensive and judgmental of her unpolished appearance.
48 year old church volunteer Susan Boyle
comes from West Lothian in Scotland. She lives at home with
her cat Pebbles and has never been married, or kissed!
When she said her wish was to become as
famous as British singer-actress Elaine Paige, acerbic
judge Simon Cowell smirked mockingly, judging her on
her looks. But behind her somewhat unkempt appearance hid
a magnificent voice that even stunned the famously critical
Cowell.
Upon finishing her song, she received a standing
ovation from the live audience and unanimous praise from the
judges.
After a breathless silence during Boyle's
performance, the audience burst into a standing ovation.
Piers Morgan, one of the judges,
admitted that he was impressed and said, "That was the biggest
surprise I have had in three years of the show. "You said
you wanted to be like Elaine Paige and everyone laughed at
you. Well no one is laughing now."
Another judge, Amanda Holden, was almost brought
to tears by Boyle's performance. "I am just thrilled," she
said. "I think we were all guilty of being cynical before.
It was a complete privilege to hear you."
The most cynical of judges, Cowell had a harder
time admitting he misjudged Boyle before. "I knew the minute
you walked out on that stage that we were going to hear something
extraordinary, and I was right," he said of the unemployed
woman from West Lothian, Scotland.
Susan
Boyle has been dubbed "The Woman Who Shut Up Simon
Cowell" (ABC
News). Cowell was reported to be setting up a contract
with Boyle with his Syco Music company label, a subsidiary
of Sony Music.
The contrast between the audience's first
impression of her when she appeared on stage compared to the
ovation she received afterwards triggered global interest.
Articles about her appeared in newspapers worldwide, while
the numbers who watched videos of her audition have set an
online record. ("The
Washington Post") (enlarge
photo)
"The
Washington Post": But it's not just in online
video where Boyle, the unassuming woman from a tiny Scottish
town, has dominated. Her Wikipedia entry has attracted nearly
500,000 page views since it was created.
Over the weekend, her Facebook
fan page was flooded with comments, at some points
adding hundreds of new members every few minutes. The page
listed more than a million fans within a week.
Indeed, the sleepless Internet is her round-the-clock
stage, and the 47-year-old who has said she's never heard
of YouTube is the Web's hottest entertainer.
"She's really the world's singer right
now," said YouTube spokeswoman Julie Supan. In her
four years at the company, Supan said she cannot remember
a video raking in this many views in such a short period of
time.
Her rendition of I Dreamed A Dream from
the musical Les Miserables has turned her into a global phenomenon
with celebrity fans including the actress Demi Moore.
Susan
Boyle told show presenters that she was single and
living with her cat Pebbles. "I've never had a boyfriend,"
she said. "I've never even been kissed."
She has appeared on several US TV programmes
including Larry King Live, the veteran interviewer's CNN show,
and has been invited to sing on the queen of US daytime TV's
programme The Oprah Winfrey Show.
A prospective corporate client was told that booking
Miss Boyle, 48, who was second in the competition behind dance
group Diversity, for just three songs lasting about four minutes
each would cost a staggering £115,000.
An email from her agent Andrew Pountain, of Industry
Music Group, to a corporate client who asked about booking
Miss Boyle to perform three four-minute songs at an event
in August said her fee would be "100k plus VAT", the News
of the World reported.
