“I didn’t want the stigma of ‘Pop Idol’ – I just wanted a record deal,” admits Sarah Whatmore, as we sit down to chat via Zoom about her return to music, a decade in the making.
She first rose to prominence twenty-five years ago as a contestant on the inaugural season of Simon Fuller’s TV talent contest, which saw Will Young and Gareth Gates face-off in a final seen by over 13 million viewers, with 8.7 million votes cast. The show launched both of their careers, along with that of third-place finalist Darius Danesh, who finished with just 0.1% of the votes ahead of Whatmore in their heat.
Neither had received enough to advance to the live shows, but when Rik Waller withdrew from the show producers scrambled to fill his spot – and as the female with the most votes in her round, they called the Manchester-born starlet. “I got a phone call from ITV saying ‘Rick Waller has pulled out. Will you come back on the live shows?’ And I said no,” she remembers, explaining: “My phone was blowing up, I was getting offered record deals everywhere. And then Simon Fuller rang me and said, ‘I need you to come in for a meeting. I want to speak to you.'”
She admits it was “always my dream to be managed by Simon Fuller”, who helped bring Madonna to the UK market and had enjoyed success in the late 1990s with the Spice Girls and S Club. “Sometimes I think I would have loved to have performed loads, and I probably would have got better and better and better. I probably should have just gone back on the live shows and got loads of exposure. But you can’t really live in regret. You’ve got to go with how you feel in your gut at the time – and my gut was telling me to say ‘no’.”
She stuck with Fuller, but her contract with the show meant she couldn’t move forward with releasing music until ‘Pop Idol’ was over. So that’s what she did; signing with his 19 Recordings and BMG, Whatmore set to work on her debut album ‘Living Proof’ and in September 2002 released its lead single ‘When I Lost You’. Written and produced by Richard ‘Biff’ Stannard, Rob Davis and Julian Gallagher, the glossy dance-pop track paired Whatmore’s clear, yearning vocal and lyrics about the ache of losing someone you love over brisk, electronic beats and a soaring chorus.
It entered the UK charts at No. 6 – “I think they were a bit disappointed,” she admits of the record company bosses – but hung around in the Top 40 for seven weeks and returned Whatmore to TV screens with multiple ‘Top of the Pops’ appearances. It was a landmark moment for the 21-year-old, who studied the likes of Michael and Janet Jackson and Tina Turner on the weekly chart show, fuelling a fire inside of her to take to the stage and perform.
There’s talk that ‘When I Lost You’ was originally intended for another pop icon, Kylie Minogue, on her ‘Fever’ album. “I think there’s a bit of confusion there,” she clarifies. “Rob Davis worked with Cathy Dennis and they wrote ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’, but he hadn’t worked with Biff yet. When they got together, I think they were intending to write ‘When I lost You’ for Kylie, but she was going in the ‘Slow’ direction. So the song had been circulating a bit.”
She heard that Blue had demoed the track but Biff “really wanted a solo female to do it, and I happened to be just signed. Simon said, ‘Let’s hear your vocals on it,’ and they said, ‘Yeah, it’s yours’.” Following its success, Whatmore once-again enlisted Stannard and Gallagher, along with co-writer David Morgan, for ‘Automatic’, which stalled just outside of the Top 10. Looking back, she admits the hype and pressure surrounding her at the time was “too much,” and “while the songs were good, I don’t think they were hits.” “There was another song on the album called ‘Don’t Let Me Go’, which I thought was probably more of a hit than ‘Automatic’,” she suggests. “But at the time, when you’re young, you just listen to your superiors. And I just went with it.”
The album was ready to go and a third single in the planning, but when other could-be-hits came through the door, like ‘Toxic’ – the global, chart-topping smash that secured Britney Spears her first and only Grammy – and Rachel Stevens‘ solo debut ‘Sweet Dreams My L.A. Ex’, the campaign started to derail. “There was a bit of hesitation, which caused a car crash,” she admits, revealing tensions between the record company and management also became strained.
“My record company actually sat me down and said, ‘We believe in you. We want to bring your album out. We want to do this – but we want you to sack Simon Fuller’,” she recalls. “I was like ‘what do I do?’, and it could have gone one way or the other. You had to be a complete bitch to be in the music industry back then. And that’s the truth. But I was very loyal and I didn’t want to upset upset anybody.”
Whatmore adds: “I was never really bothered about the fame anyway; I used to shy away from it. I’m not the type of person to be like, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ I’m not like that and I think that’s where I struggle. I remember Simon, once he got to know me, saying, ‘I think you’re insane to want to become famous, Sarah. Knowing who you are, maybe you should take a step back and just do songwriting.’ Which I thought about – but when I’m on stage, I just love it.”
It’s been a decade since Whatmore last released music, but earlier this year she returned with the single ‘Fool’s Gold’, followed by a new version of her 2016 track ‘Full Circle’. Both were produced by up-and-coming Wigan-based producer Sholz-y, as was her latest release ‘Hate’ – which picks up where she left off 25 years ago.
She’s been holding onto the track for 10 years and it was her son who encouraged her to finally release it, when she played it to him after telling him off for listing all the school teachers he “hates” in the car home one day. “I don’t actually like the word, and I never use it, but I ended up saying to my son, ‘I can’t really tell you off, because I’ve written a song called ‘Hate’.’ So then he asked me to play it for him and he was like, ‘This is really good!'”
She sent it off to Sholz-y, who turned around the final track. Their collaboration, she says, “just seems to work”: “It’s nice when you find a producer who just ‘gets’ you. And we’re not working in an intimidating, big studio where you have to write a hit – it’s in his bedroom, I’ve got a cup of tea, and it works.”
There’s more new music to come. She has around 160 more songs that are written but not yet recorded – “Maybe I should just get them all out and turn into dance songs,” she laughs – including her next single ‘I Was the Damage’, and she’s planning to put out an EP before the end of the year. “There’s loads that we’ve collaborated on and it’s all this sort of vibe, which everyone seems to be loving, so why try and fix what isn’t broken?”
While she’s looking firmly to the future, Whatmore still has unfinished business with the past; recently, she’s been trying to track down who owns the rights to ‘Living Proof’ with a view to finally release her lost debut, 25 years later. “I contacted Simon five years ago and said, “It’s there. It’s done. Can we just release?’,” she says, “and he’s like, “Oh no, it’s too complicated. The lawyers said it’s too complicated’.
“But we’re trying to find the right person – it’s like knocking on wood most of the time – and the hope is that we’ll be able to get ‘Living Proof’ out on CD and vinyl.”
