Susan Boyle: Cry Me a River

I find that they've posted a 1999 recording by Susan Boyle, "Cry Me a River," a local charity-published CD that I am sure will now become a gazillion-dollar collector's item.

You MUST hear this.

Her Wikipedia bio (extracted here) is to break the heart:

Boyle was born in Blackburn, West Lothian to Patrick, a storeman at the British Leyland factory in Bathgate, and Bridget Boyle, a shorthand typist. Brought up in a devout Roman Catholic family, she is the youngest of nine siblings, four brothers and five sisters, of whom only six now survive. She was born when her mother was 44. The Sunday Times writes that it was a difficult birth, during which Boyle was briefly deprived of oxygen leading to mild learning difficulties, which led to bullying and mockery at school. . She was labeled "Susie Simple" at school but learnt to overcome those who derided her.

After leaving school with few qualifications, she was employed for the only time in her life as a trainee cook in the kitchen of West Lothian College for six months, and took part in government training schemes. She would visit the theatre from time to time to listen to professional singers, and performed at a number of local venues. ...[I]n 1999 she made her only previous recording, singing "Cry Me a River" for a charity CD funded by the local council to commemorate the Millennium. Boyle also attended the Edinburgh Acting School, and had appeared as part of the Edinburgh Fringe.

Boyle's father Patrick died in the 1990s, and her siblings had left home, leaving Boyle to look after her aging mother Bridget, who died in 2007 at the age of 91. Boyle still lives in the family home, a four-bedroom council house, with her ten-year-old cat, Pebbles. ...

Her mother had always encouraged her to enter local singing competitions, which she won several times, and tried to persuade her daughter to enter Britain's Got Talent, urging her to take the risk of singing in front of an audience larger than her parish church. Boyle has said she did not feel ready to do it until after her mother's death saying that it was that event which propelled her to go on Britain's Got Talent and seek a musical career as it was her way of paying a tribute to her mother.

Her performance on the show was the first time she had sung since then.

What a miracle. I pray that success does not destroy this child of God.