Samantha Jade Gibbs was born on 18 April 1987 in Perth, Western Australia, and she began modelling at the age of four, while at the age of nine she won a talent show after singing 'Amazing Grace'. In 2002 a friend of hers sent her demo to a record producer in Los Angeles, who decided to bring Jade and her family to Hollywood for a meeting, and the following year they moved there permanently. In 2004 she signed a deal with US record label Jive Records and began laying down a few demo tracks, one of which was recorded by JoJo, with 'Secret Love' appearing on the soundtrack of the film 'Shark Tale'. In 2006 she released her first single, which was written as the theme song for the the 2006 dance film 'Step Up'. It had little promotion, and only just cracked the US Billboard Pop 100, peaking at number 92. In 2007 she released her follow-up single 'Turn Around' as a taster for her debut album 'My Name Is Samantha Jade', but it didn't fare much better than the previous record, and after three years with the label, 'My Name Is Samantha Jade' had still not been released. She was later dropped by Jive Records, and continued to work on music independently with American record label Affinity West Entertainment, recording the controversial 'Golden Touch' album for them, which would later result in issues regarding its release. In 2010, Jade made her acting debut in the film 'Beneath The Blue', a sequel to 'Eye Of The Dolphin', and then returned to music to issue 'Secret' as her third single in Australia, but it also failed to chart. Following this disappointment she relocated back to Perth and worked at her father's mining factory counting stock. In a final attempt to return to the music industry, Jade successfully auditioned for the fourth season of The Australian X Factor in 2012, singing The Script's 'Breakeven', during which judge Guy Sebastian notably teared up. She progressed to the super bootcamp stage of the competition, where she sang 'It Ain't Over 'til It's Over' by Lenny Kravitz and 'No Air' by Jordin Sparks, which propelled her to the live finals.
Over the ten weeks of live finals she sometimes struggled to stay in the competition, but in the grand final decider on 20 November 2012, she was announced as the winner, receiving a recording contract with record label Sony Music Australia and a Nissan Dualis car. After winning The X Factor, her winner's single 'What You've Done To Me' was released digitally via iTunes, debuting at number one on the ARIA Singles Chart, and her self-titled debut album was released on 7 December 2012, featuring re-recorded versions of the songs she performed on The X Factor. On 5 December 2012, Jade's former record label Camp West Recorders released the tapes that they'd kept of her 'My Name Is Samantha Jade' album, along with a few other tracks recorded with indie label Camp West Records, as 'The Golden Touch', without Jade or Sony Music's permission. Camp West Recorders Inc. company presidents John Harris and Ty Knox sued Jade for damages and alleged contract breaches, alongside Sony Music, Parade Artists, FremantleMedia Australia and Simon Cowell's Syco Entertainment, claiming that they were entitled to a share of Jade's income because they signed a development deal with her when she 15. While the court case was on-going Camp West Recorders were instructed to remove the album from iTunes, and so this example of her early work is now extremely hard to find. While in no way condoning the behaviour of Camp West, fans are bound to be interested to hear her early songs, and so rather than just posting the 'Golden Touch' album, which can be found on a number of other blogs, I've pieced together two thirds of the 'My Name Is Samantha Jade' album, and added a few of the later Camp West recordings to bulk up the record. Let's see if we can work out why Jive refused to release the album when they had the opportunity, but jumped at the chance when she became famous.
Track listing
01 What I Got
02 Officially
03 That's the Way
04 Free
05 Boyfriend
06 Why Are We Strangers
07 Turn Around
08 Step Up
09 The Golden Touch
10 So Right
11 Forever
12 Love Gone Right
