Can Sandi Thom recover from a PR backlash?

The hyping of her first record seemed a step too far. Can a new album restore this singer's popularity?

Guardian online May 20, 2008 3:15 PM

 

 

As Public Enemy said, don't believe the hype - a maxim that applies especially well to Sandi Thom. She's the Scottish songwriter who landed a record deal in 2006 by webcasting a series of gigs - which she called 21 Nights in Tooting - from her apparently dingy flat in south London.

 

A PR company was instrumental in spreading the story of how the struggling artist hit upon the ingenious idea of using the web to get attention, playing nightly from her "p***-stained basement" to audiences of up to 70,000 by the end of the three weeks. And there was more - the PR spin was that Thom was such a music-biz novice that she was releasing a record on a tiny label run by a fisherman - yes, a fisherman - from Orkney.

 

Aptly enough, when Thom signed her contract with RCA Records, which had come about when an A&R manager tuned in to one of her webcasts, she did it live online, in that same basement. (History does not record what happened to the Orkney deal.) A couple of weeks later came a number one debut single, I Wish I was a Punk Rocker, and then happy ever after.

 

The only problem with all this was that the story was picked apart almost immediately. Sceptics observed she couldn't have had the bandwidth to reach 70,000 viewers, that the RCA deal had been set up before the webcasts began and the whole thing was a scam. The "p***-stained" business in itself was enough to raise suspicion, because unless Thom was an exceptionally slovenly housekeeper, it was just too pat. To cut a short story shorter, the PR campaign blew up in her face.

 

Though she was more or less an innocent party - the hyperbolical stories were circulated not by her but by publicists - and there was no actual proof of a swindle, Thom was portrayed in the media as a cynical manipulator. It impacted on her career: the next single reached 22 and a third didn't chart at all. Not unexpectedly, she took it to heart, and sounded bitter and wounded in interviews; more recently, she wistfully spoke of wanting to "wipe the slate clean." The PR company, Quite Great, got plenty of flak, too - contributors to some music messageboards rarely miss a chance to rubbish both it and its work with other acts.

 

Thom's second album is about to be released, and I can't help but feel for her. She's a tarnished artist, and despite her label's attempts to move on (her online biography gets around the webcast issue by omitting to mention the accompanying controversy) she can only leave the past behind by making a great record. It can be done - Britney Spears counteracted a self-inflicted PR disaster (her two-day marriage in 2004) by making the brilliant single Toxic, then repeated the trick with last year's critically adored Blackout album. But Thom isn't distinctive - she's a middling pop-folk type who doesn't have Spears's top-flight writers and producers at her disposal. She's stymied by her ordinariness and a failure to make people care about her in the way, for better or worse, they care about Amy Winehouse.

 

Those who bought the first album, Smile...it Confuses People, are unlikely to give a stuff about Thom's cyber-antics, or the media storm they provoked. But her dispiriting story should be a cautionary tale for other aspiring young songwriters and their publicists.

 

Well what are your views on the KT Tunstall-lite artist?

she'll never have another hit unfortunately :( she's a one hit wonder, and if anything was to give her another top 40 hit then The Devil's Beat surely would have done so, being probably her best single to date

 

her time has been and gone :cry:

KT Tunstall-lite? How ridiculous! Girl is better than KT, for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if The Devil's Beat stuck around for a while.

Are we still even talking about this risible, irritating flash-in-the-pan...?

 

She was sh!t!! Her (s)hit song ("I wanna be a Punk Rocker WITH FLOWERS IN MY HAIR!!!!!!!" :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:, oh, please, stop, you're killing me........ :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: ) was utterly LAUGHABLE, Avril-wannabe BOLLOCKS (certainly not good enough for K T to even consider a threat to her, and I think even Ms Laveigne would consign such a sh!t song to the waste paper bin herself tbh...). And her whole "internet hype" thing was an utter scam anyway, not quite as big a sham as Milli Vanilli or Vanilla Ice, but certainly in the same ballpark... PR, marketing, spin bollocks... The sort of sh!t that's killing the decent music that's out there....

 

She represents everything I despise about modern music - artifice and hype over substance and integrity.... She can fukk right off....

I think the Devils Beat is her best song yet!

I loved I Wish I Was A .... Devil's Beat is great too :(

Nothing like KT Tunstall :rolleyes:

I think the Devils Beat is her best song yet!

 

Wouldn't be difficult though would it....? :lol: Even something on the Avril Laveigne level of songwriting would be an improvement for her.....

 

Unless she's gone through some sort of MAJOR overhaul that means that she's coming up with the sort of quality on a par with the likes of Tori Amos, Amanda Palmer or Kate Bush, I doubt I'll be interested....

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSwoSudiVdI

 

Check it out, Grimly! :P You never know - you may be surprised! Haha.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSwoSudiVdI</b>

 

Check it out, Grimly! :P You never know - you may be surprised! Haha.

 

And pigs might fly! :lol:

I really liked Sandi's debut album.

 

The fact that John Lydon liked the single so much he joined her onstage on two different occasions and went for a boozing session after one gig in LA, is good enough to show that he got the point of the song, which too many music critics/snobs failed to grasp. The same as back in 1978 when the weekly music papers of the day who had got into punk were slaughtering Kate Bush for being a hippy. Whilst after all Lightspeed Champion played on the track.

 

Her biggest mistake, was that she was an early victim in a bigger battle, her PR company looks after Paul McCartney; a rival PR company that looked after the likes of Lily Allen & The Kooks at the time looked after Heather Mills at the time.

 

Sandi's PR company did the stupid thing of claiming that the total numbers of members her site had, was the number watching her podcast. A bit like Buzzjack claiming there are 5000+ members online at any one time instead of 2/3/400. So whilst Sandi was a former star graduate pupil at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts set up and funded with £20 million+ of Paul McCartney's money in the 1990s, and with Heather about to go into a bitter divorce & PR battle with Macca; and Lily Allen less than two months away from releasing her debut album, then it was an open own goal waiting to be exploited, which unfortunately for Sandi it was, and has effectively killed her career.

 

Personally, I think Sandi is an outstanding singer, as proved by her memorable live performance of the song when it reached the UK#1 spot on TOTP, having had 400 gigs behind her before releasing "Punkrocker", in stark contrast to Lily Allen who had not played her first gig until she was signed, and was memorable for a very ropey Glastonbury set that year, until she was joined on stage by the three former members of the Fun Boy Three for a version of the Specials "Gangsters" to show how it is done to perform live. Although I thought her version of the Pretenders' Don't Get Me Wrong on the Radio 1 Established 1967 album was the best thing she has done so far.

 

I'm definitely in the John Lydon camp whom in a recent (last year) outspoken interview in Record Collector magazine (his comments towards Simon Cowell & Louis Walsh were hilariously poisonous & witty and spot on) was correct in supporting Sandi "she's hardly Kate Bush, but then who is, but at least she is a real deal and a genuine person who got famous by having talent and not via famous connections inside the nepotistic industry called showbusiness...", and spot on in his assessment of Lily Allen "a no talent fake and a fraud" & the Kooks lead singer "one of the biggest knobs I've had the misfortune of meeting ..... he should have been christened Luke Prickhard but the vicar obviously misheard..".

 

Seeing as Lily Allen is only a lyricist, then where is that second album....?

 

As for the KT Tunstall-lite comment, that comes from a quote by Radio 2 DJ Mark Radcliffe, who is most famous for describing Prince in the mid 1990s as "The Artist formerly known as talented..."

 

Anyway, it seems that at least Popjustice.com now like Sandi.....

 

Sandi Thom's real guide to Tooting...

 

Seeing as Lily Allen is only a lyricist, then where is that second album....?

Coming shortly, actually. :heehee: But I agree about Punk Rocker; she obviously has a sense of humour.

Her biggest mistake, was that she was an early victim in a bigger battle, her PR company looks after Paul McCartney; a rival PR company that looked after the likes of Lily Allen & The Kooks at the time looked after Heather Mills at the time.

 

Sandi's PR company did the stupid thing of claiming that the total numbers of members her site had, was the number watching her podcast. A bit like Buzzjack claiming there are 5000+ members online at any one time instead of 2/3/400. So whilst Sandi was a former star graduate pupil at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts set up and funded with £20 million+ of Paul McCartney's money in the 1990s, and with Heather about to go into a bitter divorce & PR battle with Macca; and Lily Allen less than two months away from releasing her debut album, then it was an open own goal waiting to be exploited, which unfortunately for Sandi it was, and has effectively killed her career.

 

Well, you could be right there, but it still doesn't convince me that she's not just exactly the same as the 10 million (well, it seems like that number anyway...) other "quirky" female singer-songwriters out there vying for attention, and I just cant get past just how much I detested "...Punk Rocker" and all the Internet bollocks, call me a snob if you want, I hate that song, it irritated the fukk out of me and it always will, despite my respect for Johnny Rotten.... Lily Allen is frankly someone I wouldn't p!ss on if she were on fire, everything she does and everything she says, is frankly utter bollocks, and The Kooks are just the biggest pile of Haircut (s)indie P(l)op sh!te out there....

 

I took Jark's advice, I listened to the new one.. Put it this way, I don't hate it... But I need a bit more convincing to wash away the bad taste "..Punk Rocker.." left in my mouth...

I agree Rich that her debut album was good and unfairly overlooked...I don't recall disliking any of the songs and many of them, especially the ballads, were very nice to listen to if not groundbreaking

 

I enjoyed the Popjustice interview thing in Tooting, a very true look at a typical British high street which I'm sure we can all relate to!

Whilst 'The Devil's Beat' is ok, it's not quite enough to turn her around from being such a high profile one hit wonder.

 

'What If I'm Right' and 'Lonely Girl' were both infinitely better than 'Punk Rocker', I think she's mainly suffered because she had such a big hit with a song which was gimmicky.

What If I'm Right should really have been a very big hit; fabulous song, charming video - it really had everything. :heehee:

 

The Devil's Beat is certainly strong enough comeback single material, I just don't think that anything would get her any attention now, which is a shame - this really is a song perfect for radio and the summer.

 

Glad you listened Grimly - and glad you don't hate it! :P

What If Im Right IMO is still a pop classic!