Ireland in 50 Albums, No 34: Gotta Tell You, by Samantha Mumba (2000)
Samantha Mumba performing 2001, a year after releasing Gotta Tell You. Picture: Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
Samantha Mumba was always going to be a star. A Billie Barry kid from age three, during her time attending the prestigious Dublin stage school, she also practised signing autographs in her diary for when she hit the big time. Successful on the music and acting circuits in Dublin during the late 1990s, she was discovered at 15, which led to a chance meeting with Louis Walsh (then-manager of Boyzone and Westlife).
“I had been having meetings with record labels in Ireland at the time,” she smiles over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. “But nothing happened. Then a few months later, the label guy we were speaking to called us from a dinner he was at with these hotshot producers [Richard 'Biff' Stannard and Matt Rowe] who were working with the Spice Girls at the time. And so we scrambled out to meet them, only for them to suggest we follow them to Lillie’s Bordello. Bear in mind I was 15,” she laughs.
