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| Birth Name(s) : Alexandria Thom |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Musician |
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Full Sandi Thom Biography
Alexandria "Sandi" Thom (born August 11, 1981) is a Scottish singer-songwriter from Macduff in Aberdeenshire. Thom has sold over a million albums and a million singles worldwide, and releases her second album entitled Pink and the Lily in early 2008. Thom first became famous for webcasting gigs from her basement flat in Tooting.
While being educated at Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen, Sandi was in a covers band called The Residents between the ages of 14 and 17, where she sang and played keyboards. Thom says she owes much of her musical knowledge to the years she spent with The Residents as this is where she formed a love for bands such as Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, The Beatles and artists such as Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin. Thom and the band travelled across Scotland, playing in pubs and clubs.
At the age of 17, Sandi attended the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts otherwise known as LIPA. While at the Liverpool Institute, she sang in a gospel choir called Love and Joy. It was with this choir that Thom sang You'll Never Walk Alone to 40,000 football fans at Liverpool's Anfield stadium. During her time at LIPA, Thom formed her own 7 piece band. The band entered a BBC Talent urban music competition, which was produced in association with BBC Radio 1, and made it to the semi-finals. They also recorded an EP, "Time To Breathe", at Parr Street Studios. Two of the founding members of the band, Craig Connet and Marcus Bonfanti, remain in Thom’s band to this day. The band also included Jake Field on keyboards; he went on to co-produce her first album and the forthcoming second album.
"I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker" was re-released on May 22, 2006. The song had been gaining in airplay exposure (see "21 Nights From Tooting" for additional details), and based on download sales from the previous week, and it achieved #15 on this basis in the general charts (and #7 in the download-only chart). The physical release had three formats: two CD versions (one featuring the radio mix and "A Light As Bright As Ours", another featuring the radio mix, the album mix, a further remix, "May You Never" and the video), and also as a 7" vinyl record backed with "No More Heroes". The song has been playlisted on BBC Radio 2, and Virgin Radio, Capital Radio.
In the week of May 22, the song reached #2 in both charts, kept off the top slots by continued strong sales of Gnarls Barkley's Crazy.
Her album was released in the United Kingdom on Monday June 5, 2006. It went straight to number one, in the chart dated June 11. The single was nominated for a Brit award but did not win. Thom responded, "I didn't expect to get one and would have been very shocked to win a Brit." Scots-born Thom also commented that "It was an exciting time to be a British female artist" and in the following months, she decided to politically align herself to the Scottish National Party which advocates the ending of the British union and wants total independence for Scotland. Thom now has a growing friendship with the first minister Alex Salmond.
Thom has been the subject of criticism by many artists within the recording world, most notably from Lily Allen, The Fratellis and The Automatic, who said on the BBC "If she was a punk rocker with flowers in her hair she'd get the s*** kicked out of her by other punk rockers, for having flowers in her hair", Rob from the band vented." I haven't found anyone who's told me they like that song and bought it." I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker went on to sell over 400,000 copies and was one of the highest selling singles of 2006.
Thom states that she was familiar with webcasting, having had a show at the Edinburgh Left Bank webcasted in October by an independent production crew run by a friend of hers by the name of Paul Boyd, a fortnightly live webcast night called www.leftbanklive.com. The same team then went on to launch the night Nexuslive (www.nexuslive.com).
The March 7 Reuters story mentioned that "I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker" was being rereleased the following week, with the album following in April. However, the publicity surrounding the tour led to major label interest, with music label representatives attending the gigs in question.
Some observers have questioned how she was able to sustain production of the webcasts; critics suggest that she "could not have supported such a large audience on her webcast if she really was a starving artist". Others question the veracity of claims made about viewership. There are also questions as to the level of involvement of PR agency Quite Great. Her manager, Ian Brown, in an interview with the Guardian, asserted that the idea did indeed come from her, whilst her management and publicist claim to have conducted a large publicity campaign, including a million "virtual flyers"
Thom made an appearance at the Northsound Radio to 40,000 Free at the Dee festival in Aberdeen on September 4, 2005. The Daily Record stated that she "impressed with powerful vocals". She headlined a charity gig in Edinburgh later in September 2005, and was described as "hotly-tipped" by the Daily Record. However, in addition, Sandi "has been labeled a fraud" according to the Daily Record. |
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