Emily Brown
It's the early noughties, you're hanging out with your friends on a Saturday evening and Samantha Mumba's track 'Gotta Tell You' is blasting out of the CD player.
The Irish singer released a series of bangers in 2000 and 2001, including tracks like 'Baby Come On Over' and 'I Don't Need You', which featured on the soundtrack for Legally Blonde.
Two decades on fans can still remember every word of some of Mumba's hit songs, but many are now questioning what happened to the singer following her initial rise to fame.
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Mumba was just 17 when 'Gotta Tell You' reached the top five in the charts in Ireland, the UK and the US, and in 2002 she showed off her talents as an actor by appearing in the sci-fi/action film The Time Machine.
She took some time out of the spotlight in the late noughties, but in 2013 she returned to music with the release of the track 'Somebody Like Me'.
Mumba moved to the US following her initial rise to fame, though last year she said she would 'ideally' like to spend half of her time in Los Angeles and half in Ireland.
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"I was getting home three, four times a year, so it never felt like I was having to pick one or the other because it was the best of both worlds, but I would definitely love to have a little base of my own just to have when I’m back," she told the Irish Examiner.
She released two more singles, titled 'Cool' and 'Process' in 2020, and in 2021 she joined the judging panel of the RTÉ singing gameshow Last Singer Standing.
Joining the show in the year after the coronavirus pandemic, Mumba said: "It’s been a terrible year to be in the entertainment industry in Ireland, so when I heard that this was different to the usual singing competition shows where the prize is a terrible record deal that you’re promised at the end of it, I jumped at it.
"These are singers who have had a really sh*tty few years, as we all have, and I think it gives them great exposure, and there’s a big cash prize at the end of it and that’s it. I like that.
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"It’s my first time to work on a show like this. I wouldn’t be a huge fan of the standard singing competition shows anyway, and wouldn’t be something I watch, but this genuinely just piqued my interest because I thought it was different.”
Mumba got married to her husband, Torray Scales, in 2012 and three years later welcomed a child into the world.