Sam Brown is celebrating 35 years since her debut with the release of ‘Number 8’ – her first album in 16 years.
The daughter of rock and roll musician Joe and the Vernons Girls and Breakaways singer Vicki began writing and recording at a young age and appeared on a run of releases for other artists as a teen.
Aged 19, the young musician inked a publishing deal and was sent out to Los Angeles to work on material for what would become her debut album. “I was this spotty punk in dungarees, which didn’t go down well,” she laughs in RETROPOP’s February 2023 issue, “but I met some great people.
“The guy I wrote Stop! with, Gregg Sutton, was this real New York, seventies kind of guy… very bluesy. I remember I was driving back to the place I was staying and I started singing bits of it, like the chorus, and then the rest of it just fell out.”
Armed with an arsenal of material, she inked a deal with A&M Records aged 21 and set about recording her first long-player. However, her first single, the pop rock anthem Walking Back to Me, failed to chart in the UK, and even Stop! stalled at No. 52 upon its initial 1988 release.
But the following year, a re-release of her now-iconic single launched into the Top 5, spending a total of 12 weeks on the rundown, and topped the charts across Europe.
It remains Sam’s signature song and one that, according to the musician, has seen her through the ensuing years. “Stop! has been just brilliant to me as a song. It’s sustained me financially through the difficult bits,” she smiles. “But it is quite derivative and it does sound like an old song.
“I don’t really know where it came from because it’s very unlike all my other songs. But it did make me realise that my voice was suited to that kind of singing, so that became a part of what I did.”
In the subsequent years, Sam continued to record until 2007, when she lost her ability to sing and was forced to step away from the limelight. Flash forward 15 years, though, and she’s back with a new electronic sound and vocals that have been artificially tuned.
“I hope I can make it work and I hope people love the album, because I’ve really enjoyed it,” she shares. “I think this album is quite good fun. I play it really fucking loud in the car with the bass going ‘boom boom boom’ so people look at me. I’m like, ‘Yeah, this is great, isn’t it?’”
‘Number 8’ is out January 20 on Dunmore and available to pre-order now.
Read the full interview in the February 2023 edition of RETROPOP, out now. Order yours or subscribe via our Online Store, use our Store Finder to locate your nearest stockist, or get Digital Copies delivered direct to your devices.
