He is the comeback kid. She is the maiden aunt with a dream.
Robbie Williams and Susan Boyle are now also unlikely rivals for the longest musical prize of the year: the No1 album slot in the run up to Christmas. This weekend the two British stars are both in America to wage a publicity war that only one of them can win. They have as much in common as a silk bow tie and a pair of tartan slippers but the struggle to win sales from the target audience they share may prove crucial to the future of the record companies that back them.
Boyle's arrival at Los Angeles airport marked the onset of what was inevitably dubbed "Boylemania" by the US media. The 48 year old Scot, who won fame on Britain's Got Talent singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables, wore sunglasses and blew kisses to fans as bodyguards led her through a crowd of photographers to a waiting limousine. Six months ago Boyle was unemployed and living alone with her cat in the West Lothian town of Blackburn, but on Wednesday night she sang her new single, a cover of the Rolling Stones's Wild Horses, to a vast TV audience on the US version of the show that made her a household name.
For the music commentator Paul Gambaccini there is little doubt who will triumph. "No contest. It is Susan Boyle," he said this weekend. "That is not an insult to
Robbie Williams, it is just that, bizarre as it sounds, Boyle is the new artist story of the year around the world. The interest factor alone will bring her many, many sales."
Her take on the Jagger/Richards classic has already prompted a surge in orders, taking her album to the top of the Amazon.com chart, above both Whitney Houston and the Beatles. The I Dreamed A Dream album will be released by Sony Music on 23 November, a fortnight after
Robbie Williams's EMI release of Reality Killed the Radio Star. This will be the former Take That star's final attempt to crack the American market and revive the multi-million sales of his early solo career. Like Boyle's promoters,
Williams's publicists have arranged a series of high profile platforms for his comeback. In Britain he appeared on Chris Moyles's Radio 1 show to unveil his single Bodies, and on Friday it was confirmed he will sing the song for the first time on television on the X Factor live finals next month.
Williams has not played in Britain for three years and has lived in self imposed exile. He flew into LA on Friday with his partner, actress Ayda Field, to publicise the release of his single on 12 October.
Williams, 35, has never managed to extend his European success to America. In 2005 Take That reformed without him and found new fans while
Williams's career stalled. His 2006 album Rudebox did not sell well and music critics were unsparing. He acknowledged he was at a "turning point" in his career. "This next record decides my path," he said.
His new album is produced by veteran hitmaker Trevor Horn, of whom
Williams says: "He's added something I haven't had on previous records his genius." The singer wants his new music to elate people and make them "forget about who they are and where they are for 50 minutes".
Yet industry pundits are not convinced that
Williams can make headway against Boyle. Releasing the album in proximity to I Dreamed A Dream is a big mistake for EMI, according to some, after a year that has seen the company's market share drop dramatically. "I am amazed they have elected to go up against this," said one industry veteran. "Maybe they think increased traffic into record shops will report in increased sales for them too, but I am not sure that works."
Gambaccini is sceptical too: "Susan Boyle has combined YouTube hits of 120 million, and even if only one in 10 people who has looked her buys the album, we are talking ridiculous numbers. No one can stem that tide. She has the whole international Simon Cowell Machine behind her." Cowell, the impresario involved in Boyle's rise to fame, has made an unexpected choice of song for his Scottish newcomer that seems likely to turn a cult classic from the 1971 Stones album Sticky Fingers into a middle-of-the-road standard.
Bookmakers Ladbrokes have already chalked up odds as short as 2-5 on Boyle's album making Christmas No 1 in Britain. The as-yet-unknown winner of the current British X Factor series is still 1-3 favourite to top the Christmas chart, with
Robbie Williams far behind on 20-1.
For Gambaccini, if Boyle does beat
Williams it will confirm the birth of a new age.
"With the late Michael Jackson and the Beatles as the top-selling artists of the year, and then Susan Boyle and Vera Lynn topping the charts with huge sales, I think we can say the rock era is over. May it rest in peace."
