{alltv} 'Talent' sensation Susan Boyle offers a musical holiday 'Gift'

Sunday, November 7, 2010

{alltv} 'Talent' sensation Susan Boyle offers a musical holiday 'Gift'

For Susan Boyle, Christmas is "a magical time when people come together in peace and goodwill." So on her new album, The Gift, the Scot heard 'round the world invokes the spirit of the season.

Out Tuesday, Gift mixes Christmas tunes with evergreen songs by Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed and Crowded House. The album follows 2009's quadruple-platinum I Dreamed a Dream, which sold more copies in its first week than any debut by a female artist in SoundScan's 19-year history and placed No. 2 for overall sales that year.

But if Boyle, 49, feels pressured to repeat Dream's success, she doesn't let on. "I try to stay positive about everything," she says — and giggles, as she does often in conversation.

That optimism informed the song choices on Gift. The singer was drawn to Reed's Perfect Day because "it's a feel-good song. These songs all are. We're in a recession; I hope I can take people away from all that for a while."

A devout Catholic, she was attracted to the spiritual resonance of O Holy Night and Away in a Manger. For veteran music critic J.D. Considine, Dream's "perfect storm of publicity, material and timing won't happen again," he says. "That's not to say sales will drop, but doing what's kind of, but not entirely, a Christmas record is a smart way to hedge your bets."

Boyle performs Do You Hear What I Hear as a duet with Amber Stassi, a paramedic and mother of three who won "Susan Search," a talent contest launched on YouTube last July.

"She came from a hard background," Boyle says. "And she wanted to do something with her life, just like I did. I wanted to help make her dream come true."

The famously shy singer, who was briefly hospitalized for exhaustion after rising to fame on Britain's Got Talent, is getting more used to public attention. But she's still most comfortable on stage, "where I can escape, and I know I can deliver."

Though she has no plans to tour, Boyle will travel to New York for some live TV and promotional appearances. But she'll be home for Christmas — in Blackburn, Scotland, the small town where she has lived her whole life.

"For me, the perfect Christmas Day is being with your family," Boyle says.