From the age of three, Samantha Mumba has, unwittingly or not, been groomed for success. She began singing and dancing as a Billie Barry kid, severing her connections with the troupe at the age of 15 when she grabbed a lead role dancing, singing and acting in a revue show called The Hot Mikado. It was around this time Louis Walsh, then manager of Boyzone, first met her. "Samantha was with the producers of the Spice Girls (Richard Stannard and Matt Rowe) and her mother, Barbara, in Lillie's Bordello," says Walsh, now the manager of Ronan Keating, Westlife, Mumba, and a new, all-girl band, Bellefire (who make their debut in April). "I'd heard about her being in the panto and various shows, but I'd never seen or met her before. We talked in the library at Lillie's, and I told her I wanted to manage her."
At this time, Samantha was under the guidance of Robbie Wooton (The Factory, Hothouse Flowers), but Walsh maintains he was determined to manage her. Unsurprisingly, Walsh prefers not to talk in detail about how Mumba and her mother extricated themselves from under Wooton's wings. He says: "Her mother liked me and she took Samantha out of the deal they had with Robbie. It wasn't a management deal, but some kind of a spoken deal."
When Walsh first saw Mumba, his business and pop instincts told him all he needed to know. He hadn't even heard her sing, but he says she looked like a young Janet Jackson or Toni Braxton. "But she was 15 and from Drumcondra, and she was really nice. Her feet were firmly on the ground. She was a singer and a dancer and had been a Billie Barry kid. I liked her and wanted to manage her."
The fact that she was with the Spice Girls' producers, however, may have spurred his professional interest and business nous. Within a short time after that initial meeting, when Mumba and Walsh swapped phone numbers, her soon-to-be manager kick-started the pop star process by contacting Polydor UK's A & R director, Colin Barlow. Barlow himself was on a roll through his success with Boyzone, and had enough respect for Walsh's then burgeoning Midas touch (which is now firmly established beyond any reasonable doubt) to see Mumba without even hearing a demo recording, something most A & R personnel would never do.
"Louis rang me and said he had met this girl who he thought was fantastic and who he wanted to send over to me," relates Barlow from his London office. "All she had to show me in the way of promoting herself was a video of her slot in a talent competition on Irish television. Anyway, Sam came into see me with her mum. For her age, I just couldn't believe how together she was. I saw the video and reckoned she had the most amazing resonance in her voice. I didn't need to hear any more than that. I mean, she looked like a total star. I loved her attitude and the way she talked!"
Barlow says he has worked with quite a number of female singers, but for him Mumba had everything. "Outside her beauty, she has a voice that is such a calling card. It had so much character I knew I could build a great record around it. Personality-wise, she blew me away. Out of all the acts I've met over the years, Sam had that X-factor more than anyone else."
As soon as Barlow had ushered Samantha and her mother out of his office, Barlow contacted Walsh and said he wanted to do a deal. Yet something virtually unheard of occurred at this point in the discussions: Barlow, wanting to "strike while the iron was hot", sent Mumba to Sweden, to the Stockholm-based recording studios of producer Anders Bagge. Bagge, according to Barlow, was a record producer who "could create a sound for Sam, someone who could look after someone her age and groom her". Telling the Swedish producer that he thought he had discovered a "superstar", Barlow persuaded Bagge to work with Mumba on demo tracks. Connecting immediately on a creative level and personal level, Mumba was also being coached by Bagge in songwriting techniques. Again, for an unsigned, untried, untested pop act, this was unprecedented. "I was so sure we were going to get the deal, I started making the album as we were negotiating," says Barlow, who, on pitching Mumba to his superiors at PolyGram/Universal UK - John Kennedy, chairman of PolyGram UK and Lucien Grainge, deputy chairman of Universal and managing director of Polydor - was given unanimous support. "I knew she was a star from the off. I don't cry wolf very often, and they backed me from day one."
Making a debut album at such a predeal juncture is a sizeable financial risk, and something Barlow would not do again. "Because I trusted Louis, and because I think he knew how enthusiastic I was, and due to the producers in Stockholm, I wanted to keep the momentum going. Sam is young, and people like her get off on things happening quickly."
Before Polydor signed Mumba at the age of 16, 80 per cent of her debut album was, fine-tuning notwithstanding, completed. At the same time, Warner Chappel signed her for publishing rights. The recording contract, according to Walsh (who again politely declines to go into specifics), was "a very normal deal. No big money". Barlow, too, is coy about the actual amount. "I wouldn't put a figure on it," he says, "but to be honest with you, it all came about quite cost-efficiently. Because I found the right producer for her straight away without going all over the world trying to find the right person and making lots of demos and tracks, the recording process was incredibly quick and cost-effective.
"Anders Bagge had his own studio and he immediately nailed down Sam's sound. It wasn't a ridiculously astronomical deal, but it was a good deal for both sides. It wasn't one of those deals where you sit down and bite your fingernails worrying about how much money you put in. Sam was given good money to live on. Everyone felt good about it. It's a deal that will pay dividends for her - she'll make money quicker than most artists because we kept the costs down by not spending silly money."
Outside the financial considerations, says Barlow, Mumba had to feel comfortable working with him. As her A & R director, he is, crucially, her objective point of contact between the outside world and the record company (and as such is probably the most important person to relate to at the beginning of any music artist's career). "I think we got on great. I had a vision for her. That was the key for both Sam and Louis: they knew that I knew what I wanted to do with her. I knew there was a massive hole in the market place for someone like her."
WHEN Mumba wasn't in the recording studio or co-writing songs ("she has at least 20 per cent of each song she co-writes," says Walsh; "she has a great deal with Warner Chappell and she will co-write in future on everything. She's capable of it, as well."), she was put through her paces in the major label star-making procedure. Everything that mattered was covered: Mumba was schooled in choreography, talking to the camera, talking to the press, image and style presentation. Nothing was left out and nothing was refused. By the time Samantha Mumba was several months into her 17th year, both she and her debut album were finetuned, polished and ready to greet the public. "When we heard the record, we knew we were on to something fantastic, but we didn't think it would happen so quickly, especially world-wide," says Walsh.
Mumba's debut single, Gotta Tell You, was released last June and reached number one. The second single, Body II Body, followed suit. When the album was released last October, all hell broke loose in the international music industry, resulting in a bidding war in the States for Mumba's signature. A visit to Dublin last autumn by Jimmy Iovine, a highly-regarded producer and current boss of Interscope Records (home to Eminem, Limp Bizkit and - quelle surprise - Ronan Keating) brought the bidding war to a sudden end. In the city to lend an ear to the new U2 album, Iovine met Mumba in the Morrison Hotel. To put it mildly, the man flipped.
"Jimmy promised me at the time of the bidding war that he was going to break Samantha in the States, and I believed him," says Walsh, once more relying on his instincts.
The first record went to US radio and it stuck there - both in the sales charts and on Billboard. With a modest 250,000plus sales in the US (although one million world-wide, equally modest), the pressure is now on to break Mumba into the US big-time. The imminent US assault includes the repackaging of her album, Gotta Tell You, a new video by Joseph Kahn, the top pop video director in the US (Britney) costing $500,000, the new Face of L'Oreal campaign (which Mumba signed for a reported $1 million) and - the icing on the cake, according to Walsh - a coast-tocoast Disney special.
THEN there are the appearances on David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Saturday Night Live and the rest of the chat shows. To copperfasten it all, RCA's former A & R executive, Ron Sayer - the man who oversaw the career trajectory of Christine Aguilera - has joined Interscope in order to guide Mumba through the hoops. Oh, and there's something else: she has just been signed up for her first film role (a remake of The Time Machine, which will star Jeremy Irons and Guy Pearce). Scheduled for release in early 2002, she clinched the lead female role after a single reading.
"We didn't think America was going to jump on it so much," is how Walsh explains the current situation. Simply put, the US loves Samantha Mumba, but success comes at a price. Walsh reckons that, to date, Polydor has spent between £1 million and £1.5 million on her. Is she aware of the record company advance she has to pay back? "She is," he says, "and she's aware of how long it will take to pay it back! It's a bank loan and she's going to pay for it, but they know she's going to sell millions of records. "She's not fazed at it at all. I'm more fazed at it than she is. It's very tough on her. At the moment, it's non-stop, but she's very level-headed and doesn't take anything for granted."
Being pitched in the US as "the new Janet Jackson", the only thing Samantha Mumba will have to beat is demographics. Young girls are big news and money in the US and if Mumba can grab the attention of girls between six to 14 (the age group denoted by the ad execs as between toys and boys), she'll become one of the biggest pop stars in the US and easily the most successful solo pop star Ireland has produced.
"She's pop with an R & B flavour," says Walsh, the most successful manager in pop music since Brian Epstein. "She can be an R & B diva later on. She's got lots of time. She's only 18." Incidentally, Samantha Mumba's younger brother, Omero, is about to sign to Ploydor also. He's got lots of time too - he's only 11.