Dorset: Stop! singer Sam Brown turns to teaching ukulele

"I really couldn't sing professionally anymore, so I cancelled everything."

Sam Brown shot to fame when her hit single Stop! made it to number four in the charts in 1989, but while on tour in 2006 she started having problems with her voice.

By 2007 and in the middle of a marriage breakdown the pop star said her singing voice was gone.

"I was channelling all the angst and emotion of a break up into my voice," she said.

The 58-year-old said she tried everything to find a remedy, visiting voice doctors in America as well as the UK, trying aromatherapy, acupuncture and crystal healing.

"I've tried not drinking alcohol, not drinking coffee, not eating bread, not eating jelly babies, you name it I've done it. But I'm kind of alright with it now," she said.

And in 2015, after her income "took a bit of a nosedive", she decided to try something new and started teaching the ukulele.

She now has around 150 students who she coaches every week, with clubs in Dorset as well as Oxfordshire, Australia and London.

"I am Miss Brown... it gives me an opportunity to impart some of my musical knowledge," she said.

The vocalist, who once sang for Pink Floyd and Jools Holland, admitted she would "love to have my voice back".

"So that I could just sit and sing a song and not think about whether I could get the notes or not, because I definitely can't.

"Having said that my voice was very intense, so to have that taken away is very sad for me. It's been difficult to do the vocals and it's been upsetting.

"But I've been so lucky. I've had some amazing experiences in my life and they're still with me, I can revisit them any time I like and feel very proud of myself.

"So I'm OK with it, but I'd like to be able to sing for myself and sing with other people."

And thanks to the help of a professional voice-tuning app she has just released a new album, called Number 8.

"I can sing quite low fairly in tune, some of it still sounds quite natural," she said.

"Whatever my voice is like I still love writing songs."

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