For me there's no justice when Sam Brown isn't in the charts. She's every bit as brilliant as Mariah Carey or Celine Dion, though obviously a different field of music. Her voice is 100 per cent honest, coming directly from her heart, powerful and then, in a nanosecond, she has that heartbreaking, almost little-girl quality. Her mother Vicky was a superb singer, the archetypal session singer with a stunningly pure English white soul voice, and her dad, Joe Brown, has that raunchy Cockney quality. I think Sam inherited the best of both worlds.
As a person she's one of the boys - very capable of dressing up and looking gorgeous, but then she'll meet you in the bar and swap jokes with the best of them. She also makes no concession to being anything that anyone else wants her to be. In the Eighties, after the huge success of her album, Stop, she started writing tough, introspective music. That was not what the record companies wanted. But she stood her ground. Such uncompromising behaviour is very brave. Not many musicians are that brave.
Sam will always work because people want that voice. She's also very good at creating backing choirs, which is what she did with Pink Floyd and Jools Holland. And, indeed, for me - on a small tour in Europe in May playing my own solo stuff, as well as on a solo record I released last year called Pictured Within, which Sam sang on.
The Donmar is a wonderfully intimate place to see Sam. I mean, I saw Nicole Kidman there and that was intimate enough. I don't expect Sam will be doing quite that, but being so close to Sam Brown is an experience you should try, because she really does have one of the best girl voices around.
