Burke was born on 26 August 1988 in Islington, London. Her middle names come from her great grandmother (Imelda) and grandfather (Cecil) and her mother's maiden name (Ewan). She is the daughter of Jamaican-born David Burke and British-born Melissa Bell of Jamaican, Irish and Dougla descent, who is a former Soul II Soul member. Her parents split up when she was six. She has lived in Islington all of her life and has four brothers and one sister. Burke started singing when she was five and, prior to The X Factor, had no professional vocal training. At nine years old, she sang on stage in Bahrain with her mother. At the age of twelve, Burke entered the TV talent show Star for a Night where she was the youngest person in the competition. She was beaten to the number-one spot by Joss Stone. At age twelve, she also sang down the phone to Stevie Wonder. When Burke's mother asked her to sing to Jean Carne, Carne was so impressed that she asked her to perform at her show the next night. Burke attended Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in Islington and after her GCSEs she left school to pursue a career in music. Before her X Factor success, she had been working as a singer, gigging at weekends in clubs.[1] She also went on tour with "Young Voices", a charity that raises money for children with leukemia, where she performed at large venues such as the Royal Albert Hall. Still only 21 years old and with a wilfully mischievous glint in her eye, Alexandra Burke is sitting on one of the hottest pop debuts of the decade, period. The facts of her life have taken a massive shift in the last six months as Alexandra Burke has stopped being about the means that threw her into the spotlight and started being about the method with which she’s ready to execute her time in it, the fame that naturally becomes her. An orderly queue of A-list production talent in America and Europe formed to work with the girl with the golden voice. Top flight choreographers have weighed in to augment her preternatural talent for busting a move. The media has honed in on her. Alexandra Burke, Version 2.0, 2009 remix, is ready to explode. Standout tracks began to emerge from the outset. The updated dancehall groove and killer chorus of Dumb came pie-driving its way out of the speakers. The soulful ballad Silence (‘about getting the silent treatment off a man. We’ve all been there, haven’t we?’) and the astonishingly soul-bearing Perfect (‘I’m a North London girl that was born and raised in a council house. I swear sometimes. I can be a bit gobby. I like to club, I like a drink every now and again. I’m a young girl. That’s just me. I’m not Perfect, but nobody is’) made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. ‘Bad Boys’ came towards the end of the two and a half month, globe-straddling recording process. ‘My A&R and I were in a hotel room and we heard about this song. I loved the title from the moment I heard it. In the studio, after I’d sang the first verse I stopped singing and said to the producers The Phantom Boys, do you realise how much I can relate to this song? I had an instantly good feeling. This is what I do! I go for the bad boys. I go for the boys I’m not meant to. The demo felt right and I went back to New York to record it and I just knew that it had to be the first single. I texted Simon saying ‘Bad Boys for first single?’ and he texted straight back saying ‘most definitely’.’ Alex bonded with her guest rapper in the studio in LA. ‘He was wearing his sunglasses and I said ‘Flo, do you see sunshine in here?’ and that broke the ice. He took them off, smiled, and then put them back on again. That was it. I just had to see in his eyes what he was doing there. We made a connection. He took it to the next level.’ Which is precisely what Alexandra Burke is going to do with the release of her first album this autumn. There is one hurdle to overcome yet, though. And if you want any evidence of Alex’s commitment to her platinum pop product, it couldn’t come more boldly spelt out than by the girl herself. ‘Going back to perform on The X Factor will be surreal. I want to own that stage. I want to do stupid hours of ridiculous practice. My nerves will be there. That I understand. But I want to bottle those nerves like I did for the final last year and own it. I have learnt so much over the past year and every bit of that knowledge needs to go into my performances now. This is just the beginning.’