Boyle: I Did It for My Mom

Soaring to stardom was “too big for anyone to handle,” says Susan Boyle. But in her first major magazine interview, the singer doesn't pause when asked whether she’s glad she went on Britain’s Got Talent: “Come on! It goes without saying,” she tells Harper’s Bazaar. She sang "I Dreamed a Dream," she says, not for herself but for her mother, who died at 91 in 2007. “She always wanted me to make something of my life.”

She’s working on an album and has moved from her small town to London, but Boyle’s still not your typical celeb. She doesn’t go out much, eat gourmet food, or vacation. “I sing to make people happy,” she says. “I don't do it for the money, babe! Who do you think I am?” But she would like to rub shoulders with Madonna ("I like that she is a diverse pop star and controversial") and and Donny Osmond ("I bought all of the Osmonds' records and liked Donny's singing and his boyish charm").