This is yet another singer who only briefly starred on the singles chart, and could’ve had further success. Gabriella Cilmi was a teenager from Melbourne. In March 2008 “Sweet About Me” was released. This went on to spend a rather long time on the chart, and eventually reached no. 6, to become her first Top Ten hit single. This was a song that was also on the radio rather frequently, for a while there seemed to be no escape.
It was beginning to look like there was an increasing amount of interest in this newcomer. Around the same time, her debut album “Lessons To Be Learned” made the Top Ten as well. Next in August 2008 was “Save The Lies (Good To Me)”, which was more uptempo, but reached only no. 33. There was then an attempt at breaking into the Christmas market in December 2008 with “Warm This Winter”.
This was a cover of a song from 1962. There was no video made for this though, most of the promotion came from being used on the advert for Co-Op’s Christmas campaign. This does definitely remind me of those Christmases that have been and gone in more recent years. And here’s a chart fact that is definitely fascinating in my opinion (although probably not in yours).
“Warm This Winter” holds the record for the longest symmetrical run on the singles chart, going 66-29-22-29-66. After a break, Gabriella returned in March 2010 with “On A Mission”. Now this was something a little different. There had clearly been a lot of time and work put into relaunching her sound and image, which would be bigger and better than before.
Her fanbase had been established, and reached a decent size to some extent, and it was felt that the correct formula had been found to take her to the next level of fame, where should be now be a properly famous pop star around the world, and all of her singles would be guaranteed to appear in the Top Ten. And it looked like this was actually going to happen at first.
This was because “On A Mission” was acclaimed by critics and reached no. 9. But then curiously, that was it. Her second album “Ten” only spent a couple of weeks on the lower end of the chart, and she never had another hit single in the UK, which was rather disappointing as she really did seem to be on the brink of something special, and she still hadn’t even turned 20 (a third album, released in 2013, got nowhere). Well, that’s the weird world of pop music.
ADAM'S NOSTALGIC MEMORIES 
“There had clearly been a lot of time and work put into relaunching her sound and image, which would be bigger and better than before.”
…Except the image was one she didn’t particularly like, as she revealed in this 2013 Billboard article:
https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/gabriella-cilmi-takes-the-indie-route-on-the-sting-5847725/
One *definitely* cannot blame her for feeling uncomfortable about having to sex up and pose for lads’ mags.
And one cannot blame her, either, for deciding to go her own way after that, even if that meant a lot less commercial success. Indeed, she released her third (and most recent) album, The Sting, through her own label. (She even cut her hair short, though she’s since grown it long again.)
She’s still making music and still gigging (as the pandemic allows), and she’s fairly active on social media too. A bit like KT Tunstall, in fact (though she doesn’t have *quite* as big an association with Jools Holland as KT does). 😉
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