Shola Ama “hasn’t put out as much music” as she would have liked.
The 43-year-old singer released a string of hit singles in the late 1990s including “You Might Need Somebody’ and ‘Still Believe’ but admitted that her “life fulfillment” hasn’t been justified by her career.
Asked if she feels her contribution to music was ever respected, she said: “I hope so. Sometimes no because I probably haven’t put out as much music as I would have liked to and should have over the last 25 years. Sometimes you’re only ever as good as your last record and time is a very interesting thing, it just goes. Even though I came out at the end of the 90s I’m always considered a 90s artist, I didn’t quite make the noughties. Sometimes I feel it and sometimes I don’t, I think that’s just the nature of the industry and luckily, how I feel about myself isn’t justified by my career. I’m really proud of it but I’m also super happy and fulfilled in my life anyway.”
The ‘You’re the One I Love’ songstress – who released her last album ‘Supersonic’ in 2002 but released an EP in 2015 – took home the Best British Female at the BRIT Awards in 1998, seeing off competition from the likes of Eternal singer Louise Redknapp and Michelle Gayle but admitted she was “shocked” to receive the accolade because she was only in the first year of her pop career.
SHe told Metro.co.uk: “I was really shocked to get it because I thought I might get something on that night, but I didn’t know if I would win that one because it just seemed like the huge one, and everything was still so new, so in some way, I felt I hadn’t earned my stripes yet because it was in the first year of my success. I felt really proud. I remember in my speech I just thanked my mum and granny. I was supposed to do this big label/management and thank all the people who looked after me.
I remember feeling really proud but also there’s so many positives to the way music industry has changed now. It’s so much richer than when I was around and when I look back at my time, if you didn’t have a major label deal and subscribe to certain formulas, there was just no chance of your music being heard.”