14 DAY TRIAL // International singing sensation Susan Boyle, the biggest surprise the music industry has had in years, who managed to sell 8 million copies of her debut album in just a couple of months, is like a “virus.” The comparison seemed to come from none other than Susan’s idol, theater singer Elaine Paige, as we also informed you yesterday. As it happens, Paige’s words were taken out of context, she says in a statement cited by Broadway World.
The comments originated from an interview with the Daily Mail and were then immediately picked up by the national and international media. In turn, they led to talk of professional jealousy and hypocrisy on Paige’s part, especially since they came only a short while after she talked of Boyle in very appraising terms, after the two sang “I Know Him So Well” together for an ITV television special about Susan’s rise to fame. People who thought that were misled, Paige now explains, saying all her comments were taken out of a context and given a spin they did not have.
“I was dismayed to read the remarks attributed to me today in the Daily Mail which were incomplete and misinterpreted. I am a huge supporter of Susan Boyle and admire what she has achieved; she has handled the extraordinary situation of being catapulted to worldwide stardom with tremendous strength, charm and dignity and I thoroughly enjoyed working with her on the ITV special we recorded together only last month,” Paige says in the press statement to the aforementioned publication.
“I have always said it’s very hard for someone to be fast-tracked to stardom without any prior experience – I know this as it happened to me when ‘Evita’ opened and I found it extremely difficult in the beginning; today, of course, it’s much harder with the phenomenon of the internet – Facebook, YouTube etc – it seems it only takes minutes for fame to spread around the world – and that’s why I used the word ‘virus’! I wasn’t referring to Susan herself; I was referring to the speed of her fame spreading as fast as a worldwide viral marketing campaign,” the singer adds.
The comments, as they emerged in the media yesterday, were only more hurtful since Susan Boyle has repeatedly spoken highly of Paige as her idol and the reason she wanted to get into the music business in the first place. In one of her earlier interviews, the Scottish singer said she would often sing Paige’s songs in the mirror with a hairbrush for a microphone.