Samantha Mumba had something she gotta tell you in 2000. But after a couple of hits, where did she go?
Irish singer Samantha Mumba (b.1983) worked on Irish radio as a teenager before she was picked up by Polydor Records in 1999 to develop as the next big thing. Her debut single, which she co-wrote, was released in June 2000 and topped the Irish singles chart. “Gotta Tell You” went to No.2 in the UK and hit No.4 in America, launching Samantha globally with her first release! The follow up, “Body II Body”, made No.5 in the UK and No.2 back home. Both tracks came from her debut album “Gotta Tell You”, released in October 2000. The album would make No.9 in the UK and break the US top 100 peaking at No.67.
Four more hits were gleaned from the album throughout 2001 with “Always Come Back To Your Love”, “Don’t Need You To (Tell Me I’m Pretty)” and “Baby, Come Over (This Is Our Night)”, all of them going top ten in the UK, with “Baby, Come Over (This Is Our Night)” making No.49 Stateside. Samantha began work on the follow up to “Gotta Tell You” in late 2001 and into 2002 and she released the new single “I’m Right Here” in August 2002. The track gave her another top ten hit in the UK, her seventh in a row, but no further music or indeed the album ever materialised as Samantha skipped fromk music into acting when she took a lead roll in the 2002 remake of ‘The Time Machine’ starring alongside ex-Neighbours star Guy Pearce. Samantha continued this new fascination throughout the rest of the decade and would not venture back to music until 2013.
She released “Somebody Like Me” that year, her first new recording for eleven years. The song made No.5 on the Irish singles chart but did nothing anywhere else. She followed that in 2014 with “Only Just Begun”, but quickly returned to acting and modelling, not to be seen or heard of until 2020 when she announced that a new album was on the way with the comeback singles “Cool” and “Process”. To date, nothing has yet materialised apart from another new track, “The Lie”, in 2023. Apart from a best of in 2006, Samantha’s one and only album to see the light of day remains “Gotta Tell You”. Also in 2023, she has turned up at a number of music festivals to promote the new single, so perhaps that promise of new music is not far away after all…
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