British paper The Daily Mail recently reported Paige referring to Boyle as “a virus really that spread across the world in a nanosecond.”  In a statement to the Daily Mail, Paige clarified: “I wasn’t referring to Susan herself; I was referring to the speed of her fame spreading as fast as a worldwide viral marketing campaign.”

Boyle’s meteoric rise to stardom is well-documented, from her appearance on “Britain’s Got Talent,” which was viewed over 100 million times on YouTube, to the release of her first album, “I Dreamed a Dream.” The album, which came out in December, had the largest ever sales debut for a female artist.

The Scottish singer has long referred to Paige as a musical idol, even telling “Britain’s Got Talent” judges she wanted to be “as big as Elaine Paige.”  On Dec. 13, a longtime dream of Boyle’s was realized when Paige performed with her in a television special.  The two sang a duet from Chess.

On the Jan. 31 episode of her BBC Radio 2 program, Paige said she was “dismayed to read the remarks attributed to me in the Daily Mail,” and called the paper’s representation of her remarks “incomplete and misinterpreted completely.”