In a revealing new interview in the latest issue of Marie Claire magazine, Alexandra Burke opens up about her troubled family life, as well as the downsides of fame:
X Factor winner Alexandra Burke has confessed that her new-found fame has had a devastating effect on her family.
The 21-year-old singer admitted that her success on the show has led to clashes with her mother and indirectly to her brother Aaron’s attempted suicide.
Burke said her mother Melissa, who sang with 80s group Soul II Soul, finds it hard to cope with her daughter’s fame since she won the show.
In a revealing interview accompanied by a stunning photoshoot for Marie Claire Alexandra said: ‘She had Soul II Soul but it didn’t last as long as she wanted it to last.
‘Then I get this big new show, I win it, and it’s weird for her to see this.
‘Although she’s proud, it’s like she wants to rewind time to when she was younger, when she didn’t have kids.
‘I’ve never talked about this by the way. We’re not a perfect family. Things p*** me off.’
That includes being kicked out of the house at the age of 16 – she admits for the next two-and-a-half years she barely talked to her family.
The singer and her mother made up and were further reconciled during the X Factor auditions, which Alex needed persuading to attend.
She ended up winning the whole thing, starring in a duet with Beyonce in the grand final, but still the family came under strain as jealous neighbours subjected them to a campaign of harrassment in Islington, north London.
Thugs threw stones at her car and smashed a window in their block of flats and even used the name of her No.1 hit – which sold a record 105,000 copies in one day – as they abused her.
She said: ‘Every time I come out it’s abusive names. They start singing Hallelujah and shouting “Alexandra the Bitch’. It upsets me.’
The attacks became so bad that brother Aaron, now 16, attempted to take his own life in July this year, and Alex said she still fears for his well being.
She added: ‘He wanted to die. He’s going off the rails. He needs a father figure.’
Alex has now moved to Barnet and is a regular visitor to mentor Cheryl Cole’s home in Surrey.
She said: ‘I am very open with her and she is with me. I tell her lots of things I wouldn’t even tell my sister.’
Despite all the problems, however, Burke is determined to carry on with her pop career and has a new single, Bad Boys, coming out in stores on October 12 (October 11 online). {Source}
While I’m not sure Simon Cowell and co will be pleased with the whole ‘X-Factor blew my family apart’ undercurrent the interview has (and the media are already wrongly having a field day with), I applaud Alex’s realness about the situation. For all those looking to break into the industry, interviews like this really reinforce the fact that it’s really not all glitz and glamour. Not in the slightest.
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