WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Sam Brown

Have you ‘stopped’ for a moment to consider Sam Brown and what happened to her? Can I get a witness…

London born singer Sam Brown was born into a musical family with her mother a session singer and her father Joe Brown (b.1941), who had top ten hits in the 1960’s with “A Lay-About’s Lament”, “It Only Took A Minute” and “That’s What Love Will Do”. Hardly surprising that she went into the business herself and aged 14, she joined the group Small Faces before becoming a backing singer in the early 80’s for the likes of Spandau Ballet and Jon Lord of Deep Purple. It wasn’t long before she was signed on her own merits and in 1986 she began writing and recording her first album with A&M Records. The first three singles – “Walking Back To Me”, “Stop” and “This Feeling” – were not overly successful, while the album itself, “Stop”, did just that and flopped upon release in 1988.

However…a re-release of the title track in February 1989 and plenty of radio play soon corrected that and this time “Stop” didn’t stop until it had reached the top five, peaking at No.4 in April. “Stop” also found its way into the US top 100 singles chart and her album began to climb to newer heights than before. Sam capitalised on this and in May released “Can I Get A Witness?” which made No.15, which became the fifth and final release from the album, which by now had also gone top five and sold over 200,000 copies in the UK. The album was also a top ten success in many other countries globally. 1989 and early 1990 saw Sam back in the studio recording the follow up, “April Moon”, which would kick off with “With A Little Love”, which just missed the top 40. Faring much better was “Kissing Gate” which put Sam back in the singles chart at No.23. “April Moon” would gain a Silver certification in the UK with a total of five singles released during 1990.

Sam hooked up with singer Colin Vearncombe aka Black in 1991 for the song “Fly Up To The Moon” before beginning work on her third album that would emerge in 1992. Titled “43 Minutes”, the length of the album itself, this was not a commercial hit and nor was the lead single, “Fear Of Life”. Sam went back to being a backing singer in the mid-1990’s and worked with Pink Floyd on their hugely successful comeback album “The Division Bell” in 1994 while 1995 saw Sam record “Just Good Friends” with former Marillion lead singer Fish. She continued to record and release her own material with albums coming out in 1997, 2000 and 2007 but problems with her voice brought an impromptu end to her singing career and resulting in a cyst being removed from her throat. Sam diversified and opened a ukulele club in 2010 while in 2015, Sam became a singing coach. Happily, after a long period of convalescence, Sam made her return to singing herself and started work on her eighth studio album in 2022…

The January 2023 release of album number eight, simply titled “Number 8”, marked her first body of fresh work for over fifteen years. But does this complete her discography as she sees it? Planned or not, the first letter of each of Sam’s albums spell her name with “Number 8” taking the last letter of her surname! So is this the last Sam Brown album and where her own career comes to a stop? Only Sam knows the answer to that…