WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Mandy Smith

Mandy Smith was the teenager that everyone was talking about in the 1980’s. Shame it wasn’t about her music career!

Amanda Smith was born in London in July 1970 and made her name dating Rolling Stones guitarist Bill Wyman, who was 34 years her senior! Despite this causing a media sensation, Mandy’s lifetime goal was to be a pop star and having met and befriended Pete Burns of Dead Or Alive, he suggested her to producers Stock Aitken Waterman as a potential chart star in the wake of their number one hit, “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)“. Mandy impressed them and became the very first artist signed to PWL Records. She recorded and released her debut single, “I Just Can’t Wait”, in 1987, which became a top twenty success in part so mainland Europe, but not in the UK, where it flopped big time.

Undeterred, the production trio, who had produced Dead or Alive and Bananarama‘s US number one hit “Venus“, followed this with “Positive Reaction”, which, err, did not live up to its name. The song reached the top ten it Italy and that was it. Mandy released her self-titled debut album at the beginning of 1988, but alas, this too failed to achieve anything near commercial success. The album featured the track “If It Makes You Feel Good”, which had been recorded by Princess the previous year and would be recycled to much greater success in 1989 when Donna Summer recorded it for her SAW album “Another Place And Time“. “Mandy” featured two further singles, “Boys And Girls” and “Victim Of Pleasure”, both of which were chart successes in Italy and nowhere else, although the latter made a brief appearance on the US dance chart.

In 1989, Mandy released a cover of The Human League‘s “Don’t You Want Me Baby?”, which became her highest charting single in her home country…where it reached No.59! Two remixes of “I Just Can’t Wait” followed in the mid 1990’s, but that was it for Mandy Smith, pop star. She married Wyman in 1989, aged 18, but divorced less than two years later. Mandy has largely dropped out of the public eye, preferring to spend her time running a public relations agency, which she founded with her older sister Nicole, in 2005. She makes the odd appearance at fashion shows and awards ceremonies as we wonder, was she herself a victim of pleasure…?