REMEMBER Sandi Thom? She was the singer-songwriter who emerged from a piss-stained basement in Tooting in south London last year to become a best-selling singer, with a song about wanting to be a punk-rocker with flowers in her hair.
However, Thom subsequently found herself in the middle of a media hullabaloo which overshadowed that poignant internet rags-to-chart- topping-riches tale.
Her claims to have reached a global audience by webcasting from her basement flat made a hell of a story, until it emerged that, at the time, Thom already had publishing, recording and management deals to her name. This information about her heavyweight helpershadn't made it into the story which was hawked around by Thom's high-profile PR team. Thom had got her hit, but she had also got much more than she ever bargained for.
To be honest, I'd forgotten all about Thom and her basement blues until Eamon Dunphy came on the radio last Saturday morning. Conversations with Eamon Dunphy is the RTÉ Radio One show where the great man asks various other great men and women about their lives and plays some music. It's basically the same show Carrie Crowley used to do a whole lot better a few years ago.
Dunphy's guest was racehorse trainer and pundit Ted Walsh. He selected I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair) as one of his musical choices because it reminded him of a great family wedding he was at last year. Walsh is probably not the only one who remembers Thom's theme tune fondly and so it is still getting the odd spin here and there.
Thom herself is still in the game and indeed plays a free show at Belfast's Custom House Square tomorrow as part of that city's St Patrick's Day parade. After that, there's another European tour before she goes to New York to do a catwalk twirl for Vivienne Westwood in April. Her website says that we can expect a second album sometime this summer, but her record company has no definite release date for this.
In a year when second albums are all the rage - see Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire and LCD Soundsystem for a start - very few people are getting too worked up about Thom's return. Sure, her debut album sold a bundle last year on the back of that big song, but there's little expectation about what she may do this time around. In pop-culture shorthand, Thom will always be the webcast woman in that infamous piss-stained basement. If she wants to change that perception, she'll have to write a dozen songs like I Wish I Was A Punk-Rocker.
It would be interesting to know if Thom herself still believes she made the right call last year when the webcast story went into circulation. While it certainly propelled her up the ladder much faster than she ever anticipated and made for a nice bit of banter when the single was played on the radio, such success did come with a considerable downside. When commentators and journalists began to get suspicious and do some digging, it was the holes in the story and not Thom's song which hogged the limelight.
Of course, pop's back-pages are strewn with one-hit wonders who had big smash tunes like Thom's. For instance, some of you may remember Tasmin Archer, a soul singer with an amazing voice and a huge hit called Sleeping Satellites. The Sunderland fan is still making music, but has never come close to replicating the success of that impressive 1992 hit.
Thom's experience, though, is a cautionary tale of what happens when the back-story overtakes the song. While it may have worked out well for her record label, publishing company, management and booking agent, Thom herself may find she thinks differently about her webcast adventures in the long term.
Let's hope she's earned a few bob to clean up her basement flat.
