Susan Boyle may have been forbidden from singing Perfect Day on America's Got Talent, but the bonnie warbler has got the last laugh, recording the Lou Reed classic for her second album.
Perfect Day will join Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah and Crowded House's Don't Dream It's Over on The Gift, due out on 9 November.
Boyle was reportedly in tears earlier this month, when Reed's representatives declared she could not re-interpret his song for American television. Although the media alleged a Boyle/Reed feud, spokespeople claimed it was just a matter of red tape: that Boyle's label had secured UK, not US rights. That didn't stop Simon Cowell from wading in. "Two hours before she is going to perform it we get a phone call," he told BBC Radio 2. "Lou Reed will not allow her to sing Perfect Day ... [It] is so petty, so pathetic."
Happily (or, in the case of Boyle-phobic Velvet Underground fans, calamitously), they seem to have worked everything out. Perfect Day will be the lead single on The Gift, which also includes Christmas songs, the Cohen and Crowded House covers, and a duet with Boyle's own YouTube discovery, Amber Stassi. "I wanted there to be a mix of songs that would flow with all our moods this holiday season," Boyle said in a statement.
Lou Reed's Perfect Day, released in 1972, is variously interpreted as either a song about obsessive lovers, heroin, or getting drunk and going to the zoo.
