This Is Pop

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. A twee, meaningless fortune-cookie sentiment? Fair enough: but it takes on a more ominous significance when your name is Samantha Mumba, you are the new, seventeen-year-old, solo-artist protigi of pop uber-manager Louis Walsh and today is the release day of your debut single.

It is a Friday in early June, and we will be following Samantha on this important day as she proceeds through a full schedule of personal and media appearances in Dublin, meeting journalists, television producers, industry people, fans and thousands of television viewers, mostly for the first time. Never forget the importance of a first impression, either: if today does not go well, it will be slightly harder for things to get rolling for single number two.
But she has Louis Walsh managing her, you say. She can t fail. Perhaps. But as the day plays out, we discover that it s not that simple.
Anyway, remember the Carter Twins? Thought not.

The first stop of the day is an interview on Ireland AM, TV3 s breakfast show. It is 7.45 am, and hotpress are the first to arrive, shortly followed by a rep from Universal, Samantha s record label. We malinger on couches in reception and blearily watch Amanda Byram sparkling away on the monitor as we wait for the guests of honour.
A car pulls up, then another. More record company people alight; there s Louis Walsh, and there s Samantha Mumba, sunny and smiling at this early hour, as is necessary when you are being photographed every minute like she will be today.
She is wearing a V-neck jumper, mid-length denim skirt and sand-coloured wedge heels: the look is modern and stylish but slightly conservative, as if perhaps she were going to lunch with her mum. Her hair is elbow-length and twisted into hundreds of tiny plaits. She is tall, coltish and undeniably beautiful. As she waits for the others to catch up, she shifts slightly from foot to foot with an odd, graceful restlessness that makes me think of thoroughbred racehorses awaiting starter s orders.
In reception, we approach her. She looks over my head, insistently, to the point where I turn around assuming there is a mirror behind me. There isn t. Then I realise that she knows we re journalists, and doesn t know yet whether we are friend or foe. I get the distinct impression that somebody has warned her about us. Louis and the rest of her entourage are still out in the car park: she s on her own. We introduce ourselves. 'Hi, she beams, and her face lights up momentarily. Then she looks over my head again.
Louis comes in, the Universal reps fetch us and we are formally introduced, in the manner of groundlings being presented at court to benevolent royalty. They tell him we re with hotpress, and his eyebrows go up.
hotpress, eh? he says. Does anybody still read that? Hahahaha! He grasps my hand with quasi-regal good humour.
Hahahaha, I smile accommodatingly back.
He and Samantha are swept up into the procession, which carries on down the hall into the inner sanctum of TV3.
I m joking of course. I have a great relationship with them down there, Louis smiles benignly over his shoulder at me as they go.
But of course. We follow, a kerfuffle of camera bags and notebooks, rather less glamourously.

We are in makeup. Samantha sits being primped and powdered as hot unforgiving lights wink overhead. We chat about foundation and lip gloss, and now that we have shown ourselves to be normal people rather than pop-diva-eating monsters, the atmosphere is much more relaxed.
Once you get her talking, Samantha Mumba is charming and genuine, with an air of self-possessed calm probably thanks to her years of experience in the theatre that you do not normally associate with seventeen-year-old girls. Throughout the day this precocious quality will continually strike you and then she ll do or say something that reminds you she s a teenager, and you will pause, and hope the music industry does not devour this really rather delightful girl.
I ask her about the neverending parade of public appearances she s been on of late. Does she get nervous? Not really. I mean, I was an actor since I was four. But what about, say, The Big Breakfast and things like that? Being watched by millions of people? Oh, I don t mind it, really. The Big Breakfast were lovely, anyway. The early morning starts are the worst part.
Equally difficult, I would imagine, is the waiting. The whole day will turn out to entail long spells of waiting backstage, waiting in hallways, waiting in traffic, interspersed with periods of frantic activity where everything is timed to the minute, everything has to be perfect and Samantha herself must be smiling, sparkling and absolutely on.
After make-up, as we wait, TV3 production-team members introduce their kids, whom they have brought in especially to meet her. She chats amiably, signs things, makes friends with them. The contrast between their shy, scrubbed morning faces and her easy poise and carefully-drawn beauty couldn t be greater. They re probably the same age.
Suddenly, the word is given. An assistant hurriedly tapes a body mic onto Samantha, and shoves her: Go! Everyone takes off down the hall for the backstage area, past open-plan production offices, lighting trees and thick snarls of cable. Louis, also a guest on the show today, is not running. He is trailing behind at normal speed. His voice is audible, from somewhere, over the studio walls. I mean it. I mean it, he is telling somebody.
Louis! Louis! Where is Louis? He s incredible, someone fumes from just offstage, inasmuch as one would fume about someone who, in his own calm way, is absolutely running the show.
Finally, they re on and the chat is, as you d expect, light and unchallenging press-release fodder: the sort of thing you can just about digest with your cornflakes before heading off to school in the morning.
We re going to build a career, Louis says, hands spread. We re going to sell albums. There s no point in singles. There s no money in it. And later: Samantha Mumba is more Brandy than Britney, he says, enunciating the party line nearly verbatim from the press release. She is not the new Britney. Why? They turn to Samantha. Well, cos I m not some smiling blue-eyed blonde, she explains, logically enough, also quoting herself from the PR.
And then, deviating slightly from the prepared remarks, she says: I am actually not a commercial artist. Er, no? Louis lets me have a lot of say in what I wear, what I do and everything.
They ask her about her itinerary for the next while. Thank the lord they didn t ask Louis: in her words it does not sound like the aggressive, intricately-calibrated marketing campaign it is, but like a very amusing series of cool things you might want to go be a part of. Then they ask Louis what other projects he has on. Just as well: there will be plenty of time later to get to know the real Samantha.

Next on the agenda is a good old-fashioned press-the-flesh opportunity: a record signing, in the Virgin shop in The Square in Tallaght. Never mind your unplugged indie sessions upstairs in Tower Records: this is pop s heartland, the suburbs, where careers are built and pop legends stand or fall based on whose name The Kids fancy scribbling on their ring-binders this year.
We arrive a half hour early, and there is already a smallish queue, as well as non-queueing interested parties pushing prams and carrying shopping, slowing down in front of Virgin Records, sensing something in the air.
Pop-aganda is being distributed: little postcard flyers find their way into the hands of the queuing kids, the shoppers in Virgin, and the slower of the passers-by. They have Samantha s picture from the billboards on the front, and on the back a mission statement of sorts is printed in a stylish, funky font.
"SAMANTHA MUMBA IS 17 YEARS OLD AND FROM DUBLIN," it reads. "SAMANTHA IS A 21ST CENTURY TEEN WHO THINKS KYLIE WAS ALWAYS A COOL POP STAR AND THAT MOBILE PHONES ARE INDISPENSABLE. And then, in a crucial bit of brand-recognition marketing, it continues: SAMANTHA IS MANAGED BY LOUIS WALSH, MANAGER OF BOYZONE AND WESTLIFE."
At the bottom, there is a tear-off-and-send postal competition to win a Samantha debut album later this year. The cards are a nice touch: they give kids who can t afford to buy a single something cool to get autographed. The instant mailing-list of teenybopper pop fans they generate for Louis Walsh and Universal can t be bad, either.
Having said this, most of the queue have already bought a single. I approach them. When did you hear of Samantha Mumba?
I never heard of her, says my first interview subject, a girl in a hoodie, uniform skirt and trainers, about thirteen years old. Most of the queue are dressed this way: tracksuits, trainers, no make-up, straight from school.
I heard of her twenty minutes ago, another says.
Er, okay. Then why are you here?
My mate is here.
The mate is pushed unwillingly forward by her friends. She is smaller than the others, and painfully shy for a girl who convinced the whole gang to go stand in a queue for the afternoon. Why are you here?
She s got a really cool voice, she squirms.
I ve known her for ages, another, more chatty friend pipes up, proudly. Really? Yeah, I saw her at the Childline concert last year, she s deadly. She s got a deadly voice.
And she s a cool dancer, says another.
Did you buy the single? I ask the group.
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Everybody holds up singles and bags. There is one boy among the group, who throughout the conversation has been studiously looking as if he were about to perish from the boredom of such girlish silliness. Even he, however, has bought a single. He looks suitably sheepish. Whatever, he grins.
Who are you? Where are you from? a girl asks, eyeing our photographer suspiciously. hotpress Magazine, we say.
Top of the Pops magazine?? the girl explodes. No, hotpress.
Oh, says the girl, deflated.
I go find another posse. This time the ringleaders are two girls, dressed similarly, very obviously in the throes of being absolute best friends forever with each other. So. Big fans, are you?
She s a deadly singer, says one.
Yeah. And she s a great dancer, says the other, very gravely, as if she s seen millions of pop dancers come and go and whose critical attention has now been captured by a true artist. Mind you, she probably has done.
Do you like her better than Boyzone?
Oh yes, says the second one.
But we love Boyzone, says the first.
Yeah, we do, but Westlife are better.
Yeah, beams the first, going quite gooey at the thought. We love Westlife.
And Samantha Mumba!
Yeah, we better say that. They giggle.
Incidentally, does anyone here know who Kylie is?
Who?
A car pulls up. The murmur of the crowd gets louder, more restless and out of the car comes Samantha, engulfed in a huge long puffa jacket, all warm smiles and waving. Squeals of girlish excitement and cries of Samantha! erupt, politely. To my surprise, nobody screams. Later, one of the crowd-control-cum-bodyguards tells me how he prefers working with female popsters. The boy band crowds are unbelieveable, he says, rolling his eyes. You get stampeded. And you go deaf.
In we go.

The Virgin people have created a Santa s Grotto-style semi-enclosure for Samantha between the singles racks. A billboard poster is hung as a backdrop, in front of which she receives admirers from atop a high stool. Two bodyguards stand darkly by, redirecting excitable queue-jumpers and ensuring that fans don t linger too long.
To her great credit, Samantha acquits herself marvellously in a situation that, in other hands, could have been rushed, production-line-ish and disappointing, as these meet-your-hero things often are. She is chatty and attentive, asks people what they want signed on their records, compliments them on their hairclips or trainers, embraces them before they go. She radiates the kind of natural warmth and friendliness an office block full of record company execs couldn t have invented, although it is clear to see from the kids gobsmacked reactions why they might want to try. The Universal reps watch from the sidelines, smile briefly at passing kids and look at their watches. Seeing all this, you remember pop music s ironic definition the industry of human happiness and you understand the absolute truth of its double meaning.
Thank you, says a girl, entranced, her eyes shining, as Samantha hands back her record.
Thank you, says a bodyguard as he touches the girl s shoulders and gently moves her off.
We have been here for over an hour. Amazingly, Samantha is as inexhaustibly pleasant and warm toward her admirers now as she was with the very first kids in the queue. The rest of us have long wilted, and cameras and notebooks are long put away. On the sidelines, there is more frowning and watch-checking. We are moving. Now, says someone from Universal. But we don t: we stay for an additional half-hour, until every last girl is gone away happy.

Next stop: a video play and personal appearance on The Den. Time is short, and the cars swoop into the lot at RTE like SWAT teams, disgorging passengers who take off into the building at a near-run. We are waved through reception and race-walk up stairs, down endless pre-fab-walled corridors, tearing round corners in tense silence.
The Den studio is a crowded, surprisingly tiny colourbox of a room. Two walls are covered in lights, cables and cameras, with the Den s countertop crammed in directly in front of them. Outside, an equally tiny anteroom has a wall of monitors and a row of producers speaking quietly into mics. The unmistakeable subdued tension of live television thrums in the air as the seconds tick by.
A cartoon is finishing. Dustin asks: Are we allowed mention the panto? The two were in a panto together a few Christmases ago. Sure, I don t mind. Whatever you like, shrugs Samantha agreeably as they all climb into places and settle in. Her video begins; they all watch in silence.
After the video, the atmosphere is boisterous and anarchic, as usual. Samantha rises splendidly to interrogation from perhaps her toughest interviewer yet.
So is it true that there were a load of posh locations for the making of the video? Dustin grills her. Like Lucan, Finglas, I heard.
Spain, actually, Samantha giggles.
One thing about that video, Dustin croaks. Where are you going? Why do ya have to walk the whole time? Can you not afford a taxi? Is Louis Walsh taking all yer money?
Yeah, Samantha says with amused sarcasm. Louis Walsh is taking all of my money.
So how is being a pop star treating her? Damien asks. And before she can answer: So how is yer manager, that Louis Walsh? crows Dustin. I saw him on the telly there, in that Irish Times thing. No, wait, it wasn t that, it was Crimeline! Everybody guffaws, including Samantha. You can tell she gets ribbing over the Louis Walsh connection more than half often. It doesn t faze her in the slightest.
Damien asks her what kind of music she likes. She cites Destiny s Child, Westlife, TLC. Actually, she smirks prettily, I listen to Dustin s album quite a lot. That really inspires me. I listen to it all the time at home.
Yeah! Go on! cheers Dustin.
How does it feel to watch her video, and to hear her name and her records all over the place?
It s really cool. It s a bit scary, but I really don t think about it too much.
So, says Dustin, delicately getting down to brass tacks. Are you snogging anyone?
No, smiles Samantha.
Can I snog you? She laughingly refuses. He persists, rather saucily. Then, as if to save her:
I know who Dustin had a crush on at that panto, says Socky naughtily.
NOOO!! yells the turkey. Damien snaps his beak shut and holds it.
He fancies Naomi out of Buffalo G! yells Socky, interrupting himself.
He had a huge thing forrrr Samantha tortures the muzzled Dustin, drawing the word out. Twink during the panto, actually, she says sweetly.
No! No! Dustin yells, then realises. Oh right. Yeah, I do a lot for old age pensioners, he says.
Game, set, match: Samantha Mumba.
They ask her what she ll be doing in the days to come. For about the tenth time today, Samantha tells about the remainder of the record signings and TV shows, including three more obligations tonight after we leave her; the flights to London; the work on the rest of the album. She makes it sound exciting and fun, and not at all the exhausting, risky, long hard slog it, and the rest of her career, will almost definitely be.
But if anyone s up for it, she is.
Gotta Tell You is out now on Universal Records