Samantha Mumba 'Gotta Tell You'

Chart Peak: 2

YouTube

At the tender age of 17, rising R&B star Samantha Mumba, who hit the UK charts at No. 2 with debut single 'Gotta Tell You', is keen to be taken seriously... She says, "I'm black and I'm from Ireland... It means I'm something totally different. There are lots of female artists my age around at the moment... I want to show a bit more attitude."

If you want to see the actual video, it's here but in less than brilliant sound quality.
It's a pretty good start to your career to have a transatlantic Top 5 single: this lost a tight battle with Eminem's 'The Real Slim Shady' for the top of the UK chart, and matched that song's Hot 100 peak of 4 in the US. A series of further hits (in Europe at least) proved that she wasn't a one-hit-wonder either but her career was a brief one and the few who noticed when she announced her retirement from music in 2010 must surely have been surprised that it took her so long. Rumours of an album to be called Legend Of The Red Panda were sadly never proven.

The trouble is that whilst it's a decent enough example of Swedish-produced RnB-lite pop circa 2000 it's a bit too production-line, and Mumba was never able to establish enough of a musical hook for people to latch onto her career. Obviously, as she says herself there hadn't been a lot of black Irish pop stars (Phil Lynott being the other obvious example) but once people had got over that she never seemed to create enough of an image for the audience outside Ireland, where she still seems to be some kind of celebrity. In the cut-throat world of early 2000s teen-oriented pop, this wasn't quite enough.

Also appearing on: Now 47, 48, 50, 51, 53
Available on: Gotta Tell You

Samantha Mumba 'Baby Come On Over'

Chart Peak: 5

YouTube

It's only just over a year since 18 year old Samantha Mumba embarked upon her pop career - but in that short space of time Sam has rocketed to pop super-stardom... Not only has the Irish pop/soul diva scored four UK hits, she also bagged the lead female role in the big-budget remix of HG Wells' classic "The Time Machine"!

Connessieurs of Now! album artwork (and yes, such people do seem to exist) apparently feel it a slight disappointment when acts are represented not by an official publicity photo but by the single cover. That's already happened three times on this album (with Bob The Builder, OPM and of all people Kate Winslet) bu this here is the only instance I've ever encountered of them using the cover of a *different* single ['Lately']. It's symptomatic of the often sloppy packaging of Now! 50.
It's easy to forget until you read those notes how big a star Mumba was at the turn of the century, notching up six Top 10 singles here between July 2000 and October 2002, and even making some inroads to the US market - but by the time she turned twenty in January 2003 her music career was effectively over, and it'd be generous to claim that she was concentrating on her acting. The main problem is that this and her other hits, whilst not entirely forgettable (well, I remember them so they can't be) are completely lacking in any sort of personality, musically or vocally. It's probably a tribute to the management skills of Louis Walsh that she was able to sustain as long a career as she did, rather than drifting into one-hit-wonderhood like contemporaries such as Vanessa Amorosi, Chanté Moore or Debelah Morgan.

Also appearing on: Now 46, 47, 48, 51, 53
Available on: Gotta Tell You