Susan Magdalane Boyle is a Scottish singer. She rose to fame in 2009 after appearing as a contestant on the third series of Britain's Got Talent, singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables. As of 2021, Boyle has sold 25 million records. Their debut album, I Dreamed a Dream (2009), is one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century, having sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, and was the best-selling album internationally in 2009. In 2011 , Boyle made UK music history by becoming the first female artist to have three consecutive No. 1 albums debut in less than two years.

Boyle was raised in Blackburn, West Lothian. Her father, Patrick Boyle, was a miner and veteran of the Second World War who also worked as a singer at the Bishop's Blaize; her mother Bridget was a shorthand typist. Both her parents were born in Motherwell, Lanarkshire, but also had family links to County Donegal in Ireland. Born when her mother was aged 45 years, Boyle was the youngest of four brothers and five sisters. She was raised thinking that she had been briefly deprived of oxygen during a difficult birth resulting in a learning disability. However, she was told in 2012–13 that she had been misdiagnosed and is on the Autism spectrum with an IQ "above average". Boyle says she was bullied as a child.

Boyle still lives in the family home, a four-bedroom ex-council house in Blackburn, which she purchased from her earnings in 2010. Her father died in the 1990s, and her eight siblings had left home. Boyle has never married, and she dedicated herself to caring for her ageing mother until her death in 2007 at the age of 91. A neighbour reported that when Bridget Boyle died, her daughter "wouldn't come out for three or four days or answer the door or phone". Boyle is a practising Roman Catholic and sang in her church choir at her church in Blackburn. Boyle remains active as a volunteer at her church, visiting elderly members of the congregation in their homes. On a 2010 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Boyle summarised that her daily life was "mundane" and "routine" prior to stardom.