It was a chilling transformation. The previous evening Susan Boyle had seemed healthy and happy as her PA Geraldine Easton left her to go home for the night.
The following morning Ms Easton walked in to find a medical emergency. One side of the singer’s face was drooping. Her speech was almost unintelligible.
In that instant it must have seemed as though one of the music world’s unlikeliest success stories was drawing to a cruel end. Ms Boyle, then 61, had suffered a stroke and needed to go straight to hospital.
Singing was her life – all she ever wanted to do. An unforgettable reality show appearance on Britain’s Got Talent in 2009 had made that dream a reality. Now she could barely speak.
When she disappeared from the public eye in the spring of 2022, Ms Boyle feared there could be no return.
Who, then, was the blonde-bobbed character in the calf-length faux fur coat posing for a photoshoot in London in the middle of the recent heatwave? Hard to tell behind those enormous sunglasses. A hip new star, perhaps? That ‘mob wife’ look is very ‘now’.
Susan Boyle auditions for Britain’s Got Talent in 2009, something which made her dream of being a singer come true
Ms Boyle, rebranded with an air of fresh confidence, walks the streets of London during a heatwave sporting a blonde bob and calf-length faux fur coat
It was, of course, Ms Boyle herself – rebranded with an air of fresh confidence. Indeed, the roll-out of the 2026 incarnation of the Scottish songstress was straight from the marketing playbook of stars such as Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
Both were pioneers of the ‘social media wipe’ – clearing their accounts of all prior content and introducing their transformed selves with a clean slate.
Now 65, Ms Boyle has done exactly the same thing. But what’s changed besides the clothes? Musical direction for starters. Her new single is a blend of house music and electro-pop. Another project she has been working on has a breakdancing interlude.
Something wholly unexpected has happened to the singer since her stroke four years ago. It didn’t prove the end of her career at all – rather a rebirth.
‘A new era starts tomorrow,’ she declared enigmatically on Instagram a fortnight ago. This week, we understand her meaning. A flurry of ‘SuBo’ projects are coming to fruition in a synchronised comeback campaign.
It includes the new look, of course, but also a new album, a return to live performance, an upcoming fly-on-the-wall documentary and a starring role in a World Cup-themed Irn-Bru ad ahead of Scotland’s opening match against Haiti on June 14.
And her new single? A ‘remix’ of the 1970s Just One Cornetto advertising jingle – performed in house music style.
Few could have imagined her return to the limelight would look quite like this. It’s more surprising still in view of the rather old-fashioned figure she cut – which initially prompted smirks – as she tramped onto the stage in 2009 and told the Britain’s Got Talent panel she dreamed of being a professional singer like Elaine Paige.
If that took an imaginative leap, we are invited to make a new one: Susan Boyle as a chameleon-like pop icon. One who hangs out with chart-topping Scot Lewis Capaldi and counts US superstar Katy Perry and actor Timothee Chalamet among her admirers.
Not that her home life bears any comparison with the showbiz set now embracing her. She recently moved with her two cats, Ms Celine and Mr Beau, into a new home – a two-bedroom bungalow in Larbert, near Falkirk, which, at £245,000, barely dented her £30million fortune.
She practises singing in her front room and rehearses songs while she is out for her daily walks.
Never one for splurging cash in flash restaurants, she prefers LJ’s, the cafe down the street, for a cuppa and cake.
Cafe manager Lisa Harkness told the Daily Mail: ‘She came in here the first time with her PA Geraldine.’ She added: ‘She’s lovely, but she seems pretty shy. She looks really well though. She was so nice and was happy to get a picture with me outside the shop.’
Another favourite breakfasting spot is Glenbervie Golf Club on the edge of Larbert. A staff member said: ‘Susan is a regular in here. She’s in here a lot for breakfast. She likes her routines and she knows us in here now.’
Her change of location represents a huge psychological shift for such an unsterotypical celebrity, who was nothing if not set in her ways. Her previous address, a former council house in Blackburn, West Lothian, had been her home for 60 years. Even as the millions started to pour in – and after buying a larger house nearby for £300,000 in 2011 – she found she could not settle anywhere but the estate she had always known.
By 2013 Ms Boyle had four albums to her name. Pictured with Donny Osmond during the Donny & Marie show in Las Vegas
The singer gets down in the mud to breakdance in a video for one of her latest projects
But this year, she’s finally made a clean break. Ms Boyle has said she wanted to move closer to her PA Ms Easton, who has been her ‘absolute rock’ through her health struggles.
She told The Sun: ‘I’ve been coming to Larbert for 16 years. We always passed the house and I really liked it. I liked the area, too.
‘One day we drove past it and I saw the “for sale” sign outside. I asked Geraldine to arrange a viewing straight away.’
There were several reasons for leaving the past behind. Friends and family members had moved on or died; the pub where she used to perform, Happy Valley, was now boarded up and local teenagers had started to bully her, calling her names, even throwing stones.
In the end, perhaps, it made no sense to stay. If her career was to be given a fresh start, maybe her life needed one, too.
After all, little about fame had been easy for the unworldly Scot with lifelong fragilities.
As early as the night of the Britain’s Got Talent live final in 2009, it was evident stardom would be a rocky road for her. She was admitted to the Priory Clinic in London for several days following the final – where she was runner-up – after a meltdown in her hotel.
There were several more in the ensuing years. In one incident in Heathrow Airport in 2010 she began swearing loudly and singing into a mop.
The episodes were part and parcel of her Asperger’s Syndrome – a condition not diagnosed until 2012. A source close to the singer told the Daily Mail: ‘Most people don’t understand Asperger’s and what it entails, and she was accused of having some “diva-esque” tantrum, which wasn’t the case… It’s tough. It’s sensory overload and that, on occasion, has caused outbursts.’
For Ms Boyle, the diagnosis came as a relief. The youngest of four brothers and five sisters, she had lived into her 50s believing what her mother had told her, that she was starved of oxygen at birth, leaving her with brain damage.
Her early years of fame were not helped either by her troubled relationship with her brother Gerry.
By 2013 she had four albums to her name – her first, I Dreamed A Dream, was the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history – and was thought to be worth £12million. Almost inevitably, given her vulnerability and the size of her extended family, money squabbles ensued. Relatives accused her brother of ‘sponging off her’ for business ventures.
At one point Gerry allegedly threatened to take his own life if she did not give him £50,000 – a claim he strongly denied – and they were estranged for more than two years. Things between them are ‘hunky dory’ now, Ms Boyle insists.
Another challenge was handling questions about her private life. The truth is she has never had a proper boyfriend, although she spoke of being wined and dined by an American doctor in 2014 whom she described as ‘a perfect gentleman’.
‘You can never say never to finding someone,’ she once said. ‘But I do think it’s possible to be happy and to be on your own, you know.’
A fresh blow came in 2020 after several relatively quiet years for the singer. A scheduled comeback tour coincided with the first Covid lockdown. Then, just as the pandemic started to wane, she suffered her stroke.
A source close to her said: ‘She was devastated, very deeply upset as well as being ill.’ First, she had to learn to speak clearly again – then sing.
The source said: ‘She hired a private speech therapist once the crisis was over and she was out of hospital. Since then she has been seeing him a few times a week plus doing homework in between and also seeing her regular vocal coach.’
Speaking on STV in December 2024, Ms Boyle said: ‘It’s taken me three years and it’s been hard – I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but it’s made me determined to keep going.’
More of the same would surely have been the safe bet: more easy listening balladry that would appeal to her own age group, but would surely be ignored by the youth market.
Yet it is internet savvy, Gen Z audiences who are latching on to her rebrand. After Ms Boyle posted snaps of her new look on Instagram, 25-year-old PinkPantheress – a BRIT Award-winning producer and the definition of hip in today’s music scene – responded with an enthusiastic ‘OKAYYY’.
To date, there are two new tracks to whet the appetite. Just One Cornetto (reMAXed), was recorded as an advertising promo to mark the release of a new ice cream – but it has already morphed into a single. ‘I get contacted about brand work a lot, but this one really appealed… This one was serendipitous as I had been singing the original to myself just days before.’
Then there is the tongue in cheek Irn-Bru anthem, We’re Made In Scotland From Girders, with the ‘bridge section’ sung by Ms Boyle from atop Edinburgh’s Forth Bridge.
At least that’s how the video portrays it. But then it also has the 65-year-old breakdancing.
‘It’s been brilliant fun, a bit bonkers but in the best way,’ said Ms Boyle after the shoot.
Perhaps she was only talking about her rebrand. But you could be forgiven for suspecting that’s how she might describe her whole career.
