Susan Boyle: An Unlikely Superstar

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This Sunday: Big voice

Simon Cowell’s most vulnerable project, Susan Boyle, is finally settling into global super stardom
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14lGtwFXWQs9OHHIP3Wnj6jpraNLyhNg1eoCNEqNx0NQ/edit

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/magazine/article807429.ece

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This is just how I remember being with Susan in New York. If you want to see the kind, loving, caring sweet Susan, watch this video by Mauro. It is wonderful. Thank you, Mauro.

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Simon Cowell’s most vulnerable project, Susan Boyle, is finally settling into global super stardom

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/magazine/article807429.ece

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Susan's new album on sale next week!
Only a few more days until Someone To Watch Over Me is available everywhere! With its release, Susan will be making many exciting TV appearances to perform selections from the album. Visit SusanBoyleMusic.com FOR A COMPLETE LISTING OF SUSAN'S SCHEDULE. AND DON'T FORGET TO PICK UP A COPY OF Someone To Watch Over Me on Tuesday if you haven't already pre-ordered it from Amazon.com!


	AOL Music premieres "Mad World"
	Susan exclusively premiered "Mad World" from her new album for AOL Music this week, calling it, "a social comment. It's as though your eye is a camera and you're looking outward and observing. It's a very surreal song." LISTEN HERE

	Listen to Susan's emotional performance of "Autumn Leaves"
	AARP.org debuted perhaps one of the most personal and emotional tracks fromSomeone To Watch Over Me, "Autumn Leaves," which is a song about losing a loved one. Read Susan's comments about the song and experience the track for yourself. LISTEN HERE

	Susan writes a note for her fans
	Susan recently sat down to draft a very personal and beautiful handwritten note to her fans about making her new album Someone To Watch Over Me and to express what your support means to her! READ HERE

Someone To Watch Over Me
Available everywhere November 1

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Hear Susan’s deeply moving performance of “Autumn Leaves”

Visit AARP.org to hear Susan’s complete performance of the deeply moving and emotional track “Autumn Leaves” from her new album Someone To Watch Over Me, available everywhere on November 1. Susan describes the song as being very personal to her. How does it make you feel?
http://www.aarp.org/entertainment/music/info-10-2011/new-susan-boyle-song.html
http://www.susanboylemusic.com/us/news/item/hear_susans_deeply_moving_performance_of_autumn_leaves/

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In this incredibly personal and intimate ITV1 documentary, Osca Humphreys, producer and director of Cutting Edge: My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, spends three months with Susan Boyle with unprecedented access to the star, resulting in a truly up-close-and-personal film.

"Susan Boyle: An Unlikely Superstar" will air on Sunday November 6th on TLC at 8pm EST.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=isl7t6cQFSk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pfcIPrbpWk&feature=youtu.be&a

graysea · 28th October 2011

A Message From Susan

28th October 2011

Hello.

As the album launch gets nearer I’m beginning to get more excited and also a little nervous! Months and months of hard work by my fantastic team and myself will finally come to fruition in just over a week and my biggest hope is that everyone enjoys this album as much as I enjoyed making it.

This week has been a busy one, but it is been fun. At the beginning of the week I was in London, filming interviews and performances then it was back to Scotland to do an interview with a magazine. I’m very excited as this Sunday the interview that I did with The Sunday Times Magazine is published.

I really enjoyed talking to Eleanor, two hours flew past and it felt so cathartic to be able to discuss the last two years in depth. I hope you enjoy the article on Sunday. Next week is set to be just as exhilarating as the last. I”m heading off to America and Australia, but more on that next week!

http://www.susanboylemusic.com/us/blog/item/a_message_from_susan12/

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Susan was shopping according to the poster of the picture
Some fans think Susan is heading this way. Don't know where this picture was taken.

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AOL Music has the exclusive premiere of Susan’s recording of “Mad World,” from her new album Someone To Watch Over Me, available everywhere next Tuesday. Originally performed by Tears For Fears and also covered by Gary Jules, Susan described the song to AOL Music as, “...a social comment. It’s as though your eye is a camera and you’re looking outward and observing. It’s a very surreal song.”

Mad World

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_EJG97QkOg&feature=related
http://www.susanboylemusic.com/us/news/item/aol_music_premieres_mad_world/

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Thank you Mauro for this must see wonderful video. It is a beautiful tribute video of Susan's new songs. All the new songs are played and various lovely pictures of Susan run through out the entire video. Well done Mauro. One of your best musical videos. You have capture the essence of Susan.

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Subo:
This is the year I show the world what i can really do

"Since the 50-year-old, from Blackburn, West Lothian, took the world by storm in 2009 with her audition for Britain’s Got Talent, she has become Scotland’s most successful singer."

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/showbiz/music-news/2011/10/27/subo-this-is-the-year-i-show-the-world-what-i-can-really-do-86908-23518273/

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Susan Boyle is back with her third solo album 'Someone To Watch Over Me', which is released on 7 November.
The album features covers of classics such as The Righteous Brothers' 'Unchained Melody' and, more surprisingly, Depeche Mode's 'Enjoy The Silence', as well as original material.
Since her debut appearance on 'Britain's Got Talent' back in 2009, Susan Boyle has sold more than 14 millions copies and topped the charts in over 30 countries with her first two albums 'I Dreamed A Dream' and 'The Gift'.
Read Susan Boyle's comments on each of the tracks underneath...

You Have To Be There
"This song makes a demand on God's presence, it raises questions as to whether or not he can be there when needed. It’s a powerful song. It was written by Benny & Bjorn from Abba and originates from their musical Kristina and it’s very evocative and emotional."

Unchained Melody
"That was first made famous by The Righteous Brothers during the 60s. It’s about a broken relationship but it’s a love song and I really like the different arrangement of this version. I’m sure people will see the name and think ‘oh again!’ But this one’s totally different and is quite surprising."

Enjoy The Silence
"This is a foray into a whole new genre of music. Depeche Mode were a band in the 1980s. It’s a move away from the normal for me and the type of songs I’m used to doing and I hope it will appeal to a younger audience."

Both Sides Now
"It is what it says in the title. It’s reflective, somebody looking back on their life. The way I see it and saying nothing really surprises me anymore. But when you get to my age what does surprise you? If you look at things from both sides, it means you’ve been involved in life and what life throws at you and nothing really shocks you anymore does it?"

Lilac Wine
"Well 'Lilac Wine' was made famous by a lady called Elkie Brooks. I love the song because it’s one of your classic power ballads but the way we’ve handled it here it’s much more gentle."

Mad World
'Mad World', that’s about social comment. It’s as though your eye is a camera and you’re looking outward and observing. It’s a very surreal song.

Autumn Leaves
"That’s about the end of summer, when everything is dying and leading into winter. It’s about losing someone you love. This song reminds me very much of the death of my mother five years ago and being left alone and how I felt at the time. It’s a very sad and emotional song. It’s about missing someone, but you don’t realise that at the time because you are too busy focusing on other things until they are gone and you are left with a big hole in your world."

This Will Be The Year
"This song reminds me about New Year and the resolutions we make but really canny keep. You always say that but never really follow it through. It looks back at the old year but it’s also a very optimistic song as it looks forward and gives you an inner strength. This will be the year that I show them what I can really do and what I’m made of and make this album really work. That’s the personal message I got through this song. It’s definitely an optimistic song."

Return
"Well it’s about people who have gone away. It makes me think of our soldiers, fighting for our country and the families who are waiting for them to return, who miss them terribly and how you are waiting for the brave to return to complete the family. It’s an emotional song and reflective as well because when you live without that other person it’s as though a part of you is away as well. And although this song is very poetic and dramatic it also has those other connotations as well. It’s very poignant."

Someone To Watch Over Me
"This is a very bluesy, jazz type number. It’s by Gershwin and again it’s a change from my normal sound."

'Someone To Watch Over Me' by Susan Boyle is released on 7 November.

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This beautiful military tribute video was produced by Tommy of "The Amazing Susan Boyle" site. Susan, Andy Stevens and Mac, who wrote the song, were very pleased with the video. It will be posting on Susan's Facebook. Be sure to send it along to relative and friends who have family members in the service.

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Susan Boyle: An Unlikely Superstar

Episode: 1 of 1

Friday, 4 November 2011, 9:00PM - 10:00PM

Entertainment & Comedy

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/susanboyleanunlikelysuperstar/week44/default.html

Some comments about the Times news article:
English admirer comment:
TV times interview WIWBTB.
It is a full page article called TV Times Susan Boyle Special.
"She has been on Oprah, Piers Morgan did a chat with her on his Life Stories series, but to me it all seemed quite orchestrated(my italics) ," says the filmmaker. "People have heard the official story.
Susan liked the idea of a proper, observational, fly on the wall honest documentary"
He describes the film as "Very sweet but very honest"
"Susan has seen it and she liked it,"says Osca(the film maker). She simply said, "Nicely put together lad!".
There's a lovely full length photo of Susan from the cover of STWOM, walking up the path and an inset photo of Osca filming her in New York.
Later in the magazine there's a short review of the film which is given a 4 star rating (max is 5).
-------------------------------------
whoiwasborntobe writes:
Rather interesting comments by Osca Humphrey he says I was slowly tapping away about whether Susan is actually happier being famous, she still doesn't have a partner, she hasn't got more friends, she still lives in the same council house, doesn't go out buying designer clothes and clearly isn't in it for the money, so what is it that makes her happier?
When I met her, my initial thought was that she is a vulnerable person. And at the end I still think she is very vulnerable. But she has become stronger. The word that kept coming to me was endearing. She could be very funny but she could also make you feel sad as well. You talk about fairy tales but her life is not a fairy tale. Fame, money, fortune doesn't turn you into the happiest person in the world. We both have a realisation at the end of the film about what it is that really makes it worthwhile...
Susan has seen the film and she liked it, she simply said Nicely put together lad!

Some news stories regarding the Documentay
http://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tlc-susan-boyle-documentary-253046&hl=en&geo=us

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Susan on BBC Breakfast Today - Oct 25, 2011

Leave it to Tommy of The Amazing Susan Boyle site to capture this BBC interview done this morning. Check it out below:

http://tommyusa.magnify.net/video/Susan-on-BBC-Breakfast-Today-Oc;recent

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=w3Xpncw_iJc

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http://www.susanboylemusic.com/us/news/item/susans_coming_to_your_living_room_this_fall/

Susan's schedule is quickly filling up with several exciting TV appearances this fall in support of her new album Someone to Watch Over Me. Mark your calendars now as each performance is sure to be an historical TV moment in the making!

November 2 - The Today Show on NBC

November 3 - Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN

November 4 - The View on ABC

November 25 - The Today Show on NBC

December 7 - The Tonight Show on NBC

December 8 - The Talk on CBS

RSVP to each of the events on Facebook to share with your friends!
http://www.facebook.com/susanboyle

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There's something about Molly

"Kylie (Minogue), she broke down and cried and that went viral, then Susan Boyle, she opened up completely, so I'm starting to feel like I'm a rather weird Barbara Walters.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/confidential/theres-something-about-molly/story-e6frf96x-1226175601286

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http://today.ninemsn.com.au/videoindex.aspx?uuid=18ae8ce0-ca00-4e66-ae4f-89f8d7afe99c
An article in the Telegraph...
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sassy-susan-boyle-is-coming-to-australia-fans-will-get-to-meet-her/story-e6frewyr-1226174565945
Susan's Site:
http://www.susanboylemusic.com/gb/news/item/susan_set_to_perform_in_australia/

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The New England Susan Boyle Fan Club held their 4th Meet and Greet Saturday, October 22, 2011 at The Common Man in Concord, New Hampshire. Nine fans attended:. Marilyn and Joyce from Maine; Louise from Rhode Island; Leigh, Helen and Jean from New Hampshire; and Grace, Claire and Pam from Massachusetts.The meeting was held in a private room and lasted almost four hours. Claire distributed new pins representing Susan's new CD made by Tweek. The group has decided to hold a two day M&G on Cape Cod in September of 2012. All the fans enjoyed talking about Ms.Susan Boyle and all the events involving something about Susan. It was a blast!

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Susan's CD songs are on this beautiful video, which was produced by devoted fan Mauro of Italy. One of many beautiful videos he has made. I don't know where he gets all of his wonderful pictures, but I am happy to see them. Enjoy!

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NBC's WEEKEND TODAY to Interview Susan Boyle, 10/22

http://tv.broadwayworld.com/article/NBCs-WEEKEND-TODAY-to-Interview-Susan-Boyle-1022-20111020#.TqIIaX14MiU.twitter

http://cartermatt.com/9343/more-susan-boyle-interview-footage-to-be-shown-on-weekend-today/

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Susan Boyle won't let overnight success go to her head

http://theclicker.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/18/8379852-susan-boyle-wont-let-overnight-success-go-to-her-head

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Amazon pre-order for Susan's 3rd CD

Someone To Watch Over Me

Album Track List:

01. You Have To Be There - written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus
02. Unchained Melody-written by Hy Zaret
03. Enjoy The Silence -written by Martin Gore
04. Both Sides Now written by Joni Mitchell
05. Lilac Wine written by James Shelton
06. Mad World written by Roland Orzabal
07. Autumn Leaves - written by Paolo Nutini and Jim Dugid
08. This Will Be The Year- new song written by Emeli Sandé
09. Return - new song written by Steve Mac and Wayne Hector
10. Someone To Watch Over Me written by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin

The music has been chosen solely by Susan and is set to surprise her fans and win her legions more with the exciting and totally unexpected new direction she has chosen. It’s being slated as her best album yet.
-From the Susan Boyle OS.

The new album, Susan’s third in just over two years sees this icon return with a diverse mix of music that will captivate the generations. Susan has specifically chosen songs that are emotive and reflective in response to the outpouring of life stories from so many people who wrote letters to her from around the globe.
-From Susan Boyle OS

With a variation of tempos, this album will stir the innermost emotions—from the beautiful and light to the dramatic, haunting, and soul searching. Susan again injects her own inimitable style into new material and classics from some of the golden ages of music.
-From Susan Boyle OS

Susan Boyle Official Site: http://www.susanboylemusic.com/gb/home/

Susan Boyle Official VEVO channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/SusanBoyleVEVO

Susan Boyle: Singer and Now Businesswoman

By Marie Sheahan Brown

Who can forget the YouTube masterpiece? She strode and sashayed onto the stage with golden stature and confidence. She sparred wittily with the three famous judges, wearied by their long day of auditions in Glasgow, Scotland. She didn’t look the part of a “professional singer,” although one might perceive that being “currently unemployed” at forty-seven left little extra for beauty-shop pampering. Was she, rather, a comedienne? Susan Boyle audition

Then she sang. The formerly skeptical audience stood enraptured, tears welling as she belted out “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Misérables with stunning clarity and passion.

More than five years after the seven-minute audition video aired on Britain’s Got Talent on April 11, 2009, and promptly hit worldwide news feeds, multitudes in America and beyond remember Susan Boyle. Since she first broke Amazon pre-sale records in September 2009, millions have bought her albums. Each year, a new carefully crafted album has been released in time for Christmas. Since 2009, five albums have garnered sixty-three gold and ninety-four platinum sales levels in forty-two countries. Her sixth album, Hope, will be released on October 21 in the United States.

Scottish and United Kingdom audiences thrilled to Miss Boyle’s first full-length concert tours in 2013 and 2014. Now she’s coming to America—home of an immediate and strong support base—starting in San Diego on October 8, and singing her way across the southern half of the United States at venues in twenty cities. A sweep through the northern states could likely follow in the future.

See http://www.susanboylemusic.com/us/events

Many have written about Susan Boyle’s difficult and graced life. Her 2010 autobiography, The Woman I Was Born to Be, is a good source. Now fifty-three, she carefully revealed late in 2013 that, after decades of mistaken assumptions, she had finally been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. The relief of self-knowledge strengthens and encourages her after a lifetime of dealing with debilitating anxiety and panic attacks, and some difficulty in handling emotions and relating comfortably to people.

“This is a point: People may have problems,” she states in a documentary, “but they’ve got other things as well. And they’ve got a lot more to offer.” (Gammon, Lottie, produced, filmed, and directed. “There’s Something About Susan.” Firecracker Films Ltd. for ITV, 45:37 minutes. 2013)

Fewer analyses have considered her role as a small businesswoman and philanthropist whose personal success has enhanced the lives and small businesses of countless others not only in her native Scotland but also in, for example, America.

Miss Boyle, easily mistaken for a stately five feet ten in the famous video, is, in fact, barely over five feet tall with soft, dainty hands and feet—a huggable China doll. So she does qualify as a smallbusinesswoman despite her multimillions in sales, which also benefit business giants like Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited; SYCOmusic (Simon Cowell); Simon & Schuster, Inc.; Amazon; and, more recently, concert tour bus companies. In significant other ways, she retains her focus on the little ones.

The woman who had “never been married, never been kissed” and remains a virgin has, since 2009, given birth with astonishing fecundity. Lewis Hyde well describes her kind of gift and fertility in his 1983 classic, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property: “I have hoped . . . to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.”

Mr. Hyde first explores traditional “gift economies,” in which citizens are considered wealthy not according to how much they acquire but how much they give. In fictional form, Jean M. Auel’s well-researched Earth’s Children series (The Clan of the Cave Bear and five sequels) describes the creativity and ingenuity that led people to survive, to form communities, and to work cooperatively for mutual benefit. Goods, services, storytelling and musical talents, art, and many other gifts were appreciated in deeper ways than they might be in a typical “market economy.”

According to reviewer JoAnn Schwartz, “Above all, Hyde is interested in examining the effect our current immersion in the market economy and the myth of the free market has both on our view of gifts and on our ability to give and receive them. The market economy is deliberately impersonal, but the whole purpose of the ‘gift economy’ is to establish and strengthen the relationships between us, to connect us one to the other. It is this element of relationship which leads Hyde to speak of gift exchange as ‘erotic’ commerce, opposing eros (the principle of attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular). A market economy is an emanation of logos.

“In a market economy,” Ms. Schwartz continues, “one can hoard one’s goods without losing wealth. Indeed, wealth is increased by hoarding—although we generally call it ‘saving.’ In contrast, in a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the circulation of the gift(s) within the community that leads to increase—increase in connections, increase in relationship strength. Through this book, Hyde helps us focus on the importance of gifts, their flow and movement, and the impact that the modern market place has had on the circulation of gifts.” (http://southerncrossreview.org/4/schwartz.html)

Susan Boyle does appreciate the financial security that she had never known, especially in the fearsome years after her mother died in 2007, when Miss Boyle kept her house cold so that she could afford the heating bill. Yet more important, Susan Boyle has said all along, “I sing to make people happy.” When she was a girl, the gift spoke “commandingly to the soul”—her soul. She honed, honed, honed the gift to perfection over decades of world obscurity. She sees with gratitude and humility the effects of this gift on people worldwide. When this gift is pointed out to her in personal conversation, she bows her head and lowers her eyes shyly. “Thank you.”

Miss Boyle’s fame and financial success have boosted tourism modestly in West Lothian, Scotland, with its pastoral more than spectacular scenery, a region that has suffered from bouts of economic depression and unemployment over the past few centuries. In February 2013, for example, following a centuries-old pattern, the main employer in the area—Halls of Broxburn meat processing plant—was closed by foreign owners, leaving 1,700 unemployed.

Lorraine Campbell co-owns and manages The Balbairdie—a nicely refurbished old hotel and pub in Bathgate, West Lothian. When the economy suffers, The Balbairdie feels it. Asked how she copes, Ms. Campbell replied, “You just keep going.” Happily, the local economy has improved some since 2013, according to Ms. Campbell in April 2014.

Miss Boyle has engaged experts like Andy Stephens, manager; Nicola Phillips, publicist; and Andrew Panton, creative and vocal director, to name a few. She has provided jobs for local personal assistants who handle correspondence, scheduling, wardrobe consultation, and myriad other details; gardeners; carpenters to renovate the council house she grew up and still lives in (her first big post-Britain’s Got Talent purchase); a housekeeper; women who fix her hair, do her nails, and apply her makeup for special public appearances and photo sessions; and others who tend to basic needs of a now-busy celebrity who still prefers to live in her home village, stop in at her favorite small shops and establishments, and take the bus.

Miss Boyle has also given seed money and sponsorship for creative business and charitable ventures in her local community and beyond. One start-up, Boyle’s Boutique, is an extended-family cottage industry that sells, among others, products featuring the new Boyle Tartan created for the family. Products may be ordered online.

Susan Boyle’s very capable personal assistant Sadie Boyle (no relation) says Miss Boyle gets about four hundred emails weekly, many requesting her generosity. This kind of response to another’s fame and fortune is not uncommon.

More unusual, and a clearer example of the fruits of the “gift economy,” is the generation of a worldwide community of Susan Boyle supporter-fans who have formed friendships, discovered or rekindled their own creative gifts, invested thousands of volunteer hours, spread financial generosity, and—to a small extent—started creative cottage enterprises for profit or merely to cover expenses.

Several unofficial Susan Boyle fansites live on the Internet. The first and largest, still flourishing, is www.susan-boyle.com. On April 11, 2009, Paul Wood, a London construction worker, watched Miss Boyle’s audition on TV and immediately put up a website. Starting within hours after the audition aired, people from many continents to whom Susan Boyle’s gift spoke “commandingly to the soul” were “irresistibly move[d]” to find out anything they could about her on the Internet. They frequently stumbled across Mr. Wood’s hastily launched site with its prolific discussion threads generating hundreds of written comments every day in the first two months of Miss Boyle’s fame.

To bring some order to the conversational chaos, Mr. Wood launched a companion Forum in June 2009 with more sophisticated software, accessed through the main website. Anyone could (and still can) join for free. The main rules are that one not be an Internet troll (a term and experience many had never heard of), that one behave reasonably civilly as outlined in posted guidelines, and that one not use the Forum itself for commercial purposes (more on that later).

Volunteer moderators and techies keep the discussions and online experience on an even keel. Online advertisements generated by Google AdSense and Amazon sales linked to the website (“SuBo Store”) help pay for the normal operational expenses.

In early 2010, Mr. Wood announced that he was going to auction off the website (some fifty thousand registered members) and its Forum (a few thousand registered members at the time). The worldwide member community could not bear the prospect of being taken over by some unknown commercial entity with other goals. So they decided to bid on the fansite themselves. A few members—by no means wealthy—each voluntarily loaned trusted fellow members a few thousand dollars to buy the fansite during the auction. The effort succeeded in July 2010.

Navigating through some tensions and hurt feelings (typical in any community anywhere), the worldwide Susan Boyle Fans International, Inc. (SBFII) community established itself as a non-profit corporation registered in Delaware, USA. SBFII elects a multinational volunteer board of directors; keeps meticulous financial records and files annual tax returns; maintains bylaws; and holds online annual meetings and elections engaging active members. Technically not a charity, SBFII uses AdSense and SuBo Store income to cover modest expenses and keep a healthy bank balance. Funds left over from voluntary collections (often for tasteful gifts for Miss Boyle for special occasions) are donated to a charity of Susan Boyle’s choice, frequently benefitting children in Scotland. By December 2011, SBFII repaid all interest-free loans given by members to buy the website; it remains debt free. No member gets paid for services to SBFII or personally benefits financially.

From the beginning, even silver-haired grandmothers proficient only with email learned to navigate the fansites in order to participate in a community of people who have experienced an inexplicable response to Susan Boyle—both her singing and her unique way of being—unlike their response to other favorite singers. Within months, members began gathering in person around the globe (often in restaurants, boosting local economies). They attended (and surreptitiously filmed and posted to the fansites for the enjoyment of those who could not attend) Miss Boyle’s performances in various cities (Britain’s Got Talent tour venues in the UK; Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tokyo, and more). Supporter-fans flocked to these events even though—until only 2013, when she first tried her own full-length concerts in Scotland—Miss Boyle was slated to sing just one, two, maybe three songs. These gatherings supported local hotels, B+Bs, restaurants, cab drivers, shops, and other travel-related businesses.

Miss Boyle and her team soon experienced that supporter-fans who came to these early events were older or at least more mature than stereotypical rowdies at, for example, Justin Bieber concerts. They saw that typical Susan Boyle supporter-fans are responsible, respectful, fun loving, generative. They include retired or active professionals—teachers, nurses, techies, writers, musicians, artists, farmers, truckers, businesspeople, social workers, radio hosts, professors, lawyers, homemakers, construction workers, postmasters, foresters.

To most gatherings (usually at restaurants) supporter-fans bring homemade memorabilia to share, including commemorative buttons and red scarves to identify themselves in various venues. The popularity of such items led SBFII to add another linked site, “Fan Creations,” linked in turn to the creators’ individual websites. Products include non-Susan-Boyle-related fan creations. Currently, three members offer SuBotique Hand Painted Apparel; Creative Images by tweek (Buttons, Mugs, etc.); and Susan Boyle Professional Singer chronicles gathered from news and other sources.

SBFII members often post creative ideas and images to discuss in writing with one another. Memorably, in 2009, a member from Texas, one from Iowa, and other volunteers, coordinated an international quilting bee. Supporter-fans from every continent, including Antarctica, created and mailed squares for a handmade quilt presented to Miss Boyle at a brunch following her debut solo appearance on the Todayshow on November 23—the day her first album, I Dreamed A Dream, was released in the United States and quickly broke world records in several categories.

Members can upload Susan-related videos that they have created; share poems that they’ve written; upload posters that they’ve designed digitally to document Miss Boyle’s career and accomplishments; upload news reports of supporter-fan activities, complete with photographs; post fine pencil drawings or paintings displaying talent the artists had only recently discovered; and offer a place where members can contribute their own essays. These essays, sometimes written in French or other non-English languages, often try to explain how the wee singer with the big voice; the shy woman who communicates profoundly—cor ad cor loquitur—through music others have written; the multimillionaire who stays in her small lifelong home and still takes the bus—the essentially inexplicable Susan Boyle—“irresistibly moves” them.

SBFII and other volunteers take responsibility to daily and positively post or re-post Susan Boyle news, photos, and encounters on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Their Internet involvement began immediately when Miss Boyle became famous—and once again experienced the bullying known since childhood, only this time inflicted by some members of the media and anonymous commentators. She writes in her autobiography, “What I didn’t know then, because I didn’t have a computer at the time, was that every time there was a mean comment about me in the press, a dozen messages of support would appear in response. On the Internet there was a growing community of fans. I had no idea how many people out there in the world felt moved to stick up for me, and I want to thank everybody for that.” (The Woman I Was Born to Be, pages 188–189)

Miss Boyle’s professional team also encourages creativity from fans. Starting with the first documentary of her life, Susan Boyle: I Dreamed A Dream, produced in 2009 by Talkback Thames, fans were invited via the official www.susanboylemusic.com site (picked up and promoted by volunteer sites) to send short videos of themselves saying “Hello, Susan!” with backdrops representing their locations. Several clips from around the world were chosen for the documentary. As a lead-up to Miss Boyle’s second album, The Gift, she held a worldwide “Susan’s Search” competition, inviting any amateur singer to upload a brief selfie singing “Silent Night.” The winner, Amber Stassi, a thirty-three-year-old paramedic from Brewerton, New York, sang “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with Miss Boyle on the album and at the 2010 outdoor Today show appearance in New York City.

In the 2013 and 2014 concert tours in Scotland and the United Kingdom, Miss Boyle and her team selected local choirs to serve as back-up choruses in every city, receiving standard financial compensation. Already individual choir members in the United States are tweeting: “Aaliyah Buchanan ‏@Itsuko_Sora I’m to pumped, i get to sing for Susan Boyle!!!!” and “Drew Mikuska ‏@DrewMikuska Hahahahaha I’m singing backup for Susan Boyle.”

Already in the twenty cities spanning the southern United States, supporter-fans from as far away as Australia and Scotland are buying tickets. They are organizing pre-concert dinner-camaraderie gatherings for supporter-fans, some of whom they have never met in person but know through their written posts on fansites. Restaurants, hotels, theaters, airlines, public transportation providers, cab drivers, and many small businesses will benefit. Susan Boyle, her team, and numerous music-related vendors will profit.

Yet in Susan Boyle’s “gift economy,” which she neither forecasted nor manipulated, money can facilitate but cannot possibly buy the greatest benefits to the community in which she finds herself to be the generator and principal member. In this higher economy, she is both blessed herself and a blessing to countless others.

As recently reported on her official website, Susan says about her upcoming United States concert tour: “This is a brilliant moment for me. The past five years have been incredible, and it just keeps getting better. I have spoken so often about wanting to tour America and be able to visit different cities for the first time—I’m so excited. This really will be fantastic, and I can’t wait for October. The US embraced and supported me from the beginning, and it really feels like a second home. So I can’t wait to get on the road and perform there.”

Source:Small Business Exchange Northeast