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.
“But these guys were such big producers that they just said to the doorman that I was an American R&B singer, or something ridiculous, and we got in. Anyway, Louis was there socialising. And I’d say he thought to himself, how did she blag hanging out with these guys? So he ended up talking to my mam for most of the night and they swapped numbers. And then we took a meeting with Louis the next day and that was kind of how everything kicked off.”
With Walsh, Mumba was offered a publishing deal, later signing to Polydor Records. She began touring — meeting writers in Denmark, producers in the UK — and co-wrote and recorded her debut album, Gotta Tell You.
Because of her hectic schedule, Mumba decided to drop out of school. “I always wanted to do music, I just never saw myself going to college or getting a degree––it wasn’t ever something that I aspired to do, if I’m being perfectly honest,” she says.
“And listen, my parents would have never just let me leave school because I didn’t want to do it anymore. So when, you know, I got my publishing deal and then record deal, they were like okay. I also don’t think I gave them a choice,” she laughs.
‘Gotta Tell You’, the lead single from the album of the same name, was released in June 2000 and peaked at number one in Ireland and New Zealand, number two in the UK, number three in Australia, and number four in the US, as well as reaching the top 20 in several countries across Europe.
It has since been listed in Billboard's 100 Catchiest Choruses of the 21st Century, allowing her to ‘break’ America officially a mark of honour Irish and British acts still deign to do to this day. It went on to make up one of nine tracks on Mumba’s sole studio album of the same name. Released on Halloween 2000, Mumba was just 17 at the time.
“At that time I was flying in and out of Sweden,” she says. “It was just like that pinnacle pop time with Britney Spears just coming out, and everything was being written in Sweden for some reason. So I flew over with my mam first and then would go back and forth on my own all the time to write. And I mean, I was living my dream, it was so exciting. But because I was working with lyrics that I had written in my little diaries, I look back on it all now and I’m mortified. Like, you’re 15… get a grip.” With the album, Mumba and the team of songwriters felt they’d created something special. “We were just so excited by it. Like I was flying around the place, not being in school. It almost felt like I was doing something bold,” she recalls.
Mercifully, Mumba says, she rarely, if ever, received anything remotely close to racism during this time. “I remember them originally wanting me to just go by Samantha, and dropping my surname,” she says. “But I remember saying to them, if people can understand how to pronounce Christina Aguilera, who was huge at the time, then they can get around Mumba.”
To this day, her influence still stands. “Samantha Mumba had a huge impact on me growing up,” Dublin musician Erica Cody says. “She made young black and Irish girls feel like they could achieve anything beyond the Emerald Isle. Representation is everything and she truly embodies the phrase: if you see it, you believe that you can be it.”
Gotta Tell You, the album, reached the top ten in both Ireland and the UK, and number 67 on the Billboard 200. “It’s such a special record to me,” she says. “It’s my first baby. And I really love performing it still.”
In later years, ‘Body II Body’, one of the darker, sexier tracks of the album, was used as the soundtrack of a particularly gruesome Irish road safety advert. At the time, the singer didn’t know her song was being lined up for the campaign.
“I was just as shocked as everybody else [finding that out],” she laughs. “I had no idea it was being used! I’ll never forget watching TV and just hearing it and being traumatised. I don’t know who made that deal. That was actually one of the few singles that I wasn’t a writer on, so maybe that’s why I didn’t have to give clearance for that one. But yeah, traumatising.”
While the album was making waves in the US, reps from People Magazine flew to Dublin to do a several-page spread on Mumba at home. It was a feature that eventually led her to play Mara in the 2002 Spielberg film The Time Machine, a role which saw her nominated for Best Breakout Actress at the Teen Choice Awards.
“The casting director saw that article. And so she reached out and asked if I would audition — which was something that actually annoyed the label to be honest, because I was in the middle of a press tour. But no regrets because I’d do it again in a heartbeat. And to be honest, I remember at the time, kind of being irritated because I was supposed to be flying from LA to Dublin for two days off and because the audition came up, I was only going to get one day. And I was like, this is so stupid, I’m never going to get this, I’d rather just be in Dublin. And then I did my audition, and I’ll never forget looking up at the casting director and she had tears in her eyes.”
As Mumba had attended with her mother and little brother, Omero, the casting director took a shine to him, too. “They asked if he’d audition, which was definitely not in the plans at all, and he got it. We just were thinking that this was a story we’d have forever. And it was lovely because we were all together in LA on set. I’ll never forget being picked up at LAX with them in a limo.”
Around a year later, Mumba was invited to perform at the Royal Variety Show in London. Attended by the British royal family each year, performers must line up and be greeted by the monarch prior to performing.
Mumba was just 17 at the time, and steadfast in her ways. “I was set that I wasn’t going to curtsy for her and I didn’t,” she laughs. “I was, and am, a very proud Irish person, and was certain she wasn’t my queen and all that. So when she came around to me, I just shook her hand. And there was no big deal made, thank God, looking back. And I’m actually mortified now because I’ve since watched The Crown and she was so young when she started and I actually grew to like her!” she laughs.
“Listen, we’ve all done things as kids we can look back on and laugh, maybe it might’ve been better if it wasn’t on a world stage.”
Samantha Mumba has plugged away in the music business, collaborating with the likes of fellow teen star Aaron Carter and Jamaican singer Damien Marley (son of Bob). Record label tribulations contributed to a stuttering career and a sense that she never quite fulfilled her potential in the music world.
She has continued to record and perform through the years, and has also had several acting parts, and a decent modelling career.
Mumba married Los Angeles police officer Torray Scales in 2012, and the couple have an eight-year-old daughter Sage.
She is an entrant into the Eurosong competition, and will perform the song ‘My Way’ on the Late Late Show special on Friday, February 7.
