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Sonia
Sonia Evans trained at drama school from the age of 8 before making appearances in "Brookside" and "Bread" (though she seems to have been edited out of the DVD. We can't find her!). The jury seems to be out on whether she badgered or was "spotted" by kindly old Uncle Pete Waterman, but either way she signed up with a young Simon Cowell's record label BMG (kerching!) and literally flew to the top of the charts with her debut single in 1989. SHE LITERALLY FLEW.
"You'll Never Stop Me Loving You" (not to be confused with the hit track "You'll Never Stop Me From Loving You" mentioned on lots of shows called names like "Top 100 Worst Tracks Of All Time" on Channel 4) sold 350,000 copies and was Number 1 over summer, 1989 for the exact weeks that I was on holiday abroad. The follow up, "Can't Forget You" took an age to appear and wasn't very good, only just scraping the Top 20. On the sleeve, Sonia wore a horrible red and white patterned dress thing that remains ingrained in the minds of everyone who saw it. Sonia's debut album, "Everybody Knows" was so cheap that the jacket she wore on the back was clearly the one from the front cover turned inside out. Nevertheless, it was stacked with "tunes" (and a few filler tracks like wretched "Climb To The Top of A Mountain") and made a modest Number 7 on the mid-weeks.
Sonia continued to release singles with PWL, including duetting with popular man-band Big Fun on "You've Got a Friend", possibly the least-sympathetic charity single ever. While a poor homeless kid rang Esther Rantzen for help in the video, Sonia grinned cheekily with her thumbs aloft on the cover while imploring said urchin that she would "be there" for him. I often wonder if she secured that promise. The song is actually a minor classic, but didn't dent the Top 10.
After being dropped by PWL, Sonia was rare in enjoying a "second wind" - the "Sonia" album was released in 1991, and she scored a Top 10 hit with "Only Fools (Never Fall In Love)" on IQ Records (lost!) looking like a vamp on the cover. Cover versions galore followed (including "Boogie Nights", "You To Me Are Everything" and "Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy").
After briefly hosting lost kids TV show "The Wetter The Better", in 1993 Sonia was elected to represent the UK at Eurovision. This being the days before the public chose, the UK was treated to a whole hour of Sonia's songs on TV in an effort to choose one to represent us. There were some good choices, although "Life After Love" can actually kill you. Sonia eventually came 2nd behind the Irish with "Better The Devil You Know" (not that one).
Sadly Sonia's chart positions lacked one thing - consistency. Even her best songs like "Listen To Your Heart" were only minor hits, and so Uncle Pete dished up what he perceived as PWL's next massive song - "Counting Every Minute". Killingly, he voiced this expectation of a smash bit loudly at the time - "It'll be number one!". Alas, under Sonia's "stewardship", "Counting" made a dismal chart peak well outside of the Top 10 again, despite a video featuring some spinning clocks and a new perm for Sonia. "End of the World", the fifth single from "Everybody Knows" did likewise, the poignant nature of the track not helped by her performing it as a duet with Otis the Aardvark on TV. And then Sonia asked for an advance to buy a house. She was dropped soon after. The problem was that Sonia's cheeky grin (as evidenced utterly inappropriately on the cover of the sombre "End of the World" single) and jaunty cheekbones rapidly became tiring to the general public. She was also utterly lacking in sex appeal, poor trout. In 1992 she released this monstrosity:
"We've Got The Power" was a song for shit TV fad "Gladiators" and missed the charts. Some time later, after Eurovision, Sonia released her third album "Better The Devil You Know". Alas eventually her chart positions scraped #155 with "Wake Up Everybody" and it seemed all over for the music.
In 1995, Sonia joined "Grease" with Craig McLachlan, and then "What A Feeling" with Luke Goss and Sinitta, a threesome no sane person would turn down the chance of joining.
In 1996 she popped up as Bunty in "The Lily Savage Show" and became a Panto veteran in "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Aladdin". Oh how the mighty had fallen.
In 2002 she suffered the final indignity when she was shown on ITV washing her panties on "Reborn in the USA". Later in the series TV Gold was made when she clashed with David and Thereza from "Dollar".
The confrontation began when Sonia left the show in tears, before being persuaded (by long term partner and manager My Mark) to return, the resulting public sympathy seeming to nudge Sonia through to the next round ahead of Dollar. A stormy confrontation culminated in cowboy-hatted Sonia jabbing a finger at the eighties pop duo. "You're a nasty bit of work!" she said. And they were. Probably. She also performed officially the worst vocal performance of all time on the show, when she brutally and savagely murdered "The Greatest Love Of All". Some weaker animals and birds literally gave up living during the song. For Comic Relief 2007, Peter Kay assembled a roll-call of mostly icons and has-beens - so of course Sonia was invited to appear. The presence of Sonia, Mad Lizzie Webb and Frazer Hines in the same shot in the video created video footage that human eyes just aren't equipped to take. She's currently doing a turn in "007 - The Musical" with Celena from the Honeyz. It's a living.
There's this - never officially released, but you can get it off the superinterweb highway:
The legendary lost Motownphilly album features Sonia's takes on such Motown classics as "When Will I See You Again", "I Love Music" and "Backstabbers".
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