Susan Boyle

Posts Tagged ‘Piers Morgan’

I’ve been reading various media reports, the original source of which was probably The Sun, that Susan Boyle’s cousin has had a successful audition for Britain’s Got Talent.

I’ve so far been unable to get the young lady’s name, but according to The Sun she wowed the judges, Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan, with her rendition of “Fields of Gold”.

Piers said: “She is a young girl with a big voice.”

And Amanda confirmed: “We have a moment in the auditions that’s very interesting.”

Can lightning strike twice?

Piers Morgan has blasted The Brit Awards for failing to nominate Susan Boyle in any category.

Even though Susan had the best selling album of 2009, and sold eight million copies worldwide, The Brit Awards Academy, who voted for the nominees, ignored her.

Piers Morgan, one of the Britain’s Got Talent judges who became friends with Susan, is outraged and claimed the awards will be given to  “no-hopers” instead.

Speaking to the Daily Record, he said: “The idea that we cannot find room in the Brits for Susan Boyle is absolutely ridiculous.

“I’ve been invited to the Brits and I can’t wait to go there and hear all these acts that are apparently better than Susan. Most of them are a bunch of lip-syncing, useless no-hopers.”

Nominees for Brit Awards include Lady Gaga, Lily Allen, JLS and Kasabian, who have each received three nominations.

Susan Boyle has apparently said to the News of the World that her dream for 2010 would be to find the perfect man. She has said that it would provide a magical end to a fairytale year.

Susan said: “I now dream about the perfect man. Women just want the security of a nice man and somebody to love you.”

However, she is still very fond of both Simon Cowell and Piers Morgan. Of Simon, she says: “I owe so much to him. He knows I have a soft spot for him.

“Oh, I do like Piers Morgan as well – he and Simon are my kind of men!”

Susan Boyle has retained her number one spot for the top selling album on the Billboard 200 for the third week running. She sold a further 582,000 copies of “I Dreamed a Dream” during the week ending December 13th, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In total so far her album has sold 1.8 million copies – so perhaps Piers Morgan will be presenting her with another platinum disc soon!

In other news, it has been confirmed that the video of Susan Boyle’s Britain’s Got Talent audition was the top video of the year, with YouTube owners Google saying the video was watched more than 120 million times.

Susan’s TV special: I Dreamed a Dream – The Susan Boyle Story was also a big hit, becoming the number one rated television special in the history of TV Guide Network. The Americans were particularly excited about Elaine Paige’s duet with Susan Boyle. Misti in Seattle tells me: “Everyone here is SO excited and thrilled about Susan’s duet with Elaine and wanting more! In fact we are very happy for Elaine as most of us had not even heard of her before and now SHE is also going to have a wonderful career here in the USA as well as her British one.

Misti continues: “She was so sweet to Susan at the beginning when others were making fun of her and she has been so gracious about being the “guest” and giving Susan her “star” time. They both just sparkle together and sound wonderful.

“I am so hoping they do an album together and bet they will as the producers will not let THIS money maker slide through their hands.”

I think we’d all like to see more collaboration between Elaine Paige and Susan Boyle, wouldn’t we? An album of duets would be lovely.

For those of you who don’t know Elaine Paige, she has had a long career in musical theatre in the West End, but became better known by the public when Andrew Lloyd Webber selected her to play Eva Peron in his new musical Evita, back in 1978. It was Elaine Paige who recorded the original “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” and the other songs from the musical, long before Madonna remade them.

And finally, Susan Boyle is unsurprisingly odds on to secure the Christmas number one album spot in the UK, according to the bookmakers Ladbrokes.

Susan Boyle has performed a duet with one of her idols, Elaine Paige, for her TV Special I Dreamed a Dream: The Susan Boyle Story which airs this Sunday 8/7c on TV Guide Network in the US and 9:30 pm – 10:30 pm on ITV in the UK.

Susan and Elaine sang “I Know Him So Well”, from the Musical Chess, a song written by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of  Abba with the lyrics written by Tim Rice. Elaine originally performed the duet with Barbara Dickson.

According to the Telegraph, Susan was not told about the duet until shortly before the performance but appeared overcome with joy to sing alongside Paige. (However, I’m not sure I believe this – they would need time to rehearse a duet together, surely?)

Following the duet, Susan said: “I never thought I would see myself standing on the same stage with such an icon from West End theatre, let alone singing with her as an equal.”

Elaine said of the duet: “It was a pleasure to finally sing with Susan, she was a delight to work with and I think we more than did justice to one of my favourite songs.”

Also on the show, Piers Morgan will be presenting Susan with a gold disc to celebrate her album selling more than one million copies.

Whilst performing the ballad “Who I Was Born To Be”, Susan decided to jazz it up with a cheeky dance routine in the middle of the song. Reportedly, Susan repeated the jig during the second take, even though the producers asked her to keep still. She likes a giggle, does our Susan!

Piers Morgan will be the host of the Susan Boyle TV Special: I Dreamed a Dream: The Susan Boyle Story, which will air on Sunday 13th December at 8/7c exclusively on the TV Guide Network in the US, and Sunday, 13th December 2009, 9:30pm – 10:30pm on ITV in the UK.

The programme is described as being a candid documentary of Susan Boyle’s journey from the small village of Blackburn in rural Scotland to international fame and fortune following her inspiring Britain’s Got Talent performance.

Piers Morgan, who watched first hand Susan’s amazing story, says that he has been “blown away”  by her transformation.

“It is very hard to think of anyone in the history of show business that has come from such an extraordinary background as Susan Boyle,” he says. “To be propelled from the complete anonymity of Blackburn to global superstardom and having 300 million people downloading you, it is to me the most extraordinary transformation I’ve ever seen in this business.”

There is some friendly banter on the show between Piers and Susan, with Susan saying that through all the changes in her life she has become closer to Piers. “I’ve always had a soft spot for wee Piersy,” she says. “He said ‘You’re a serious artist now.’ … It really feels like I am [an artist] now.”

In addition to the expected interviews of friends and celebrity fans, including Simon Cowell, and renditions of “Cry Me a River” and “Wild Horses” from her album, Susan will also be treating fans to a performance of  “One Day More” with the London cast of Les Miserables.  There will also be a segment on Susan at home and on her recent trip to New York where she performed at the Rockefeller Centre for the today show and visited the top of the Empire State Building.

“I’ve really enjoyed myself and I’m really enjoying making the show,” Susan said of the TV special. “I don’t want the dream to end — in fact, I want it to become a reality.”

Thanks to the TV Guide Network, who were the main source for this article.

As you know, Susan Boyle gave a perfect performance of three songs from her debut “I Dreamed a Dream” album at the Rockefeller Center on November 23rd. After this performance, Susan went to meet some of her fans in the the Rock Center Cafe.

At this “meet and greet”, Susan was presented with a patchwork quilt that had been knitted together by hundreds of people from 28 countries including the UK, US, Australia, Mexico, Japan and Antarctica. Susan was a little overwhelmed with emotion at the love and support that has been shown to her by so many thousands of fans across the globe – as anybody would be.

However, press reports that Susan “broke down” have been labelled as “simply untrue” by Susan’s team and they have now confirmed that they will be taking legal action against the publishers of these reports. A spokesman for Susan said: “Susan was overjoyed and extremely touched by the gift she had just received and the reception she had from her fans in America.”

Piers Morgan has also been speaking about the issue and giving his support to Susan. He told Sky News that people saying it was all getting too much for her should “just shut-up”. He added that Susan is “thoroughly enjoying” her new found fame.

“I Dreamed A Dream” sold more than 130,000 copies in its first day on sale and experts believe it will become one of the fastest sellers of the decade.

Here is the full version of the Piers Morgan interview, about Susan Boyle, dispelling tabloid rumours that she is “cracking up”.

Susan Boyle may not have been the winner of Britain’s Got Talent. However, she appeared to be the winner of America’s Got Talent, receiving more media coverage and acclaim than the show’s actual winner, Kevin Skinner.

The Huffington Post wrote: “She wasn’t even a competitor on the show, but Susan Boyle arguably stole the finale of America’s Got Talent”.

Susan performed her debut single “Wild Horses” in front of the America’s Got Talent judges, Piers Morgan, David Hasselhof and Sharon Osbourne.

The new series of America’s Got Talent has kicked off in the US. However, the ratings for the programme are down 14% on last year’s figures, according to an article in The Sun.

Reasons given for the fall in the number of viewers include the lack of a Susan Boyle.

It was originally thought that the massive interest in Susan Boyle from the US would give the ratings of America’s Got Talent a boost – but evidently this is not the case. At least not yet, at any rate.

America’s Got Talent, which is hosted by Jerry Springer and has Piers Morgan, Sharon Osbourne and David Hasselhoff as judges, had 11.3 million viewers for NBC – down from 12.8 million for the season premier last year.

People Magazine have said of the show: “There was no Susan Boyle moment.”

USA Today said: “The show is steering clear of trying to duplicate the Boyle effect.”  (My view: rubbish! Why would they steer clear of the Boyle effect? It sounds like it’s what the show needs. Nevertheless, you can’t really plan for a “Boyle Effect” – it either happens or not. You can’t contrive it.)

Piers Morgan has been interviewed by the Examiner about Susan Boyle and America’s Got Talent.

Piers has always been a supported of Susan. He told the Examiner: “The great thing about Susan was it came at a perfect time — a time when, you know, the whole world was suffering a bit from this big recession and feeling a bit down in the dumps. And here you have the most incredibly inspiring story of somebody who had never sung outside of her village in Scotland — just part of the local church community, certainly never sung professionally — comes to an audition on “Britain’s Got Talent,” and just like Terry Fator [the winner of the second season of] “America’s Got Talent” before, something triggered this reaction.”

He added that Susan Boyle became an internet sensation whilst they were auditioning for America’s Got Talent, and because of this they noticed far more people turning up to be auditioned. In turn, this has made the standard of the final 40 acts higher than it has been in previous years. Piers said: “The Susan Boyle phenomenon has pulled through into the American show.”

Piers also added that he thought that the Susan Boyle effect would increase the viewing figures for America’s Got Talent. For Britain’s Got Talent, Susan increased the normal ratings of the show by 50%. He added that he thought America will respond to the challenge: “Have you got anyone who can beat our Susan?”

Piers was asked if the judges of Britain’s Got Talent had any prior warning that Susan Boyle had a good voice when they auditioned her. Piers said no, they have no warning. Simon Cowell is adamant that the judges should never have any warning as that would spoil the element of surprise. Remember – he nearly buzzed Hollie Steel before he heard her voice. He said you might get their name – but that is it.

He added the unpredictability and spontaneity was what made the show special.