Almost seventeen years ago, Alexandra Burke walked into an X Factor audition room with her mother and sang Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody. She didn’t know it then, but that moment would set the course of everything that followed: the win, the career, the West End roles, and eventually lead her back to Chaka Khan herself.
Alexandra Burke is, by any measure, a phenomenon: an X Factor winner whose debut single became one of the fastest-selling of all time, and whose career has spanned platinum records, arena tours and a transition into musical theatre that few artists navigate as convincingly as she has.
On the West End stage she has headlined Sister Act and The Bodyguard, building a reputation as one of the most compelling leading women in the business. But nothing she has done before quite compares to this. In I’m Every Woman — The Chaka Khan Musical, Burke is originating a role for the first time, and in doing so, stepping into the life, voice and spirit of a living legend.
It’s a show that carries a personal significance she could never have anticipated when, eighteen years ago, a mother and daughter walked into an audition room and changed both their lives with a Chaka Khan song.
Watch the video or read below for the full interview
The call that started it
The call came out of nowhere. Burke was in Greece “on the beach, having a piña colada, living my best life,” when her manager Nathan rang. Chaka Khan wanted to meet her about a musical. “I think you’ve got the wrong person,” was Burke’s instinctive response. She was wrong.
What was meant to be a 45-minute audition stretched to three hours. Burke couldn’t stop. “I was just wanting to make it perfect for Chaka,” she says. “Nothing was good enough, because I was like… you can’t send that to Chaka Khan.” A week later, she got the call. Chaka wanted her.
The weight of that has never quite left her. I’m Every Woman is the first role Burke has originated, and she describes the responsibility of it with a candour that feels entirely unperformed. “I’m nervous, I’m not gonna lie,” she tells us, speaking ahead of the show’s opening. “This is Chaka Khan’s story, and I just want to do it right and do it justice.“
Preparing for the role has required a level of commitment she hasn’t had to find before. Every song in Chaka’s catalogue presents its own challenge: she has a voice unlike any other in pop history, and her hits span funk, soul, jazz and disco across five decades. Burke spends an hour before each show locking into the character. “It’s not an easy role,” she says simply. “No two shows will ever be the same.“
The moment that changed things
The breakthrough moment came when Chaka herself walked into rehearsals. Burke had met her a handful of times before: at the Apollo in New York in 2012, briefly backstage at a television event, but this was different.
Chaka watched the company perform the Black Panther scene, the Fred Hampton sequence that anchors the show’s first act, and told them exactly what she needed to see. “I need you guys to be angry,” she told them. “Because at that time I was really angry. I need to see more fight, I need to see more fire.“
Then she turned to Burke directly. The note was simple and devastating in equal measure: “I don’t care what you look like when you sing. Open that mouth and just sing. Be ugly, and sing.“
Burke has carried it with her ever since. “Every time I walk on that stage,” she says, “I say: I don’t give a —” — she catches herself and laughs — “well, you can fill in the swear word. But that’s the attitude you need to have. That’s Chaka.“
Going back to where it all started
The emotional heart of all of this, though, is Melissa Bell, Burke’s mother. It was her mum who dragged her to that first X Factor audition “against my will,” Burke laughs, and who chose the song. Ain’t Nobody.
“I’m going to sound like a dying rat,” her mum told her, “and you’re going to sound amazing, and they’re going to say yes to daughter and no to mum.” The plan worked.
Bell has since passed away, and Burke speaks about her with the kind of quiet reverence that makes clear how much of this show she carries in her memory.
“My mum was an icon,” she says. “Soul II Soul [the musical collective her mum was part of], an amazing singer. I’m her biggest fan.“
To be back now, at the theatre where she won X Factor, in a role built around the song that started everything feels, to Burke, like something more than coincidence.
“The universe has dealt me a really beautiful card,” she says, “and I am eternally grateful. It’s very emotional being here. But I really feel and believe this is a gift from my mum.“
Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre, London
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