Tammin Sursok Review

[Andy]

HELLO>> TAMMIN SURSOK

POP SINGER

by Greg Callaghan

4 June 2005

The Australian Magazine

lThere's something faintly familiar about Tammin Sursok. It's not just the compact, perfectly proportioned frame, the lively come-hither eyes and that she's a former soap opera star (Home and Away). Like Natalie Imbruglia and Kylie Minogue before her, she has just released her debut album and record company chatter has it that it's good - very good - which is why her label Sony BMG considers her a "high priority artist". Translation: watch this girl.

Sursok's album, Whatever Will Be, took two-and-a-half years to record in London, Los Angeles and Stockholm with big-name producers such as Steve Robson (Imbruglia), Location Crew (Dido) and A-Side Productions (Britney Spears). Sursok turned down a major recording deal while still a star on Home and Away, deciding the proposed repertoire was "too bubblegum" for her liking. She wanted, she explains, something far more quirky, emotive (she co-wrote many of the new album's lyrics herself) and artful. "I want longevity," declares the 21-year-old, "and I'm prepared to work hard for it."

Sursok grew up on Sydney's leafy North Shore, after immigrating to Australia from Johannesburg with her parents, Julie (an award-winning singer in South Africa) and Daryl (now her manager) when she was four years old. At eight, she was listed with Chadwick's Modelling Agency; at 13 she scored her first TV commercial, and at 17 won the role of Dani Sutherland in Home and Away. But this new direction is, she says, her most challenging and exciting yet.

So what's the best part of live performances? "Kids knowing the lyrics of your songs - it's what you dream of." The worst? "Record company functions," she sighs. "The record executives just look at you - they have heard so much music before, you have to offer them something different - you have to make them feel." Sursok needn't worry - two songs off Whatever Will Be, released in advance of the album, have already made the Top 10 singles chart.

"I've got a weird job," jokes Sursok as photographer Andy Baker ties a microphone cord around her legs during our photo shoot. "But it's, er ... fun," she says, looking down. And, by all accounts, one laden with rich prospects.

[Andy]

POP REVIEW

Sunday Mail

5 June 2005

Whatever Will Be - Tammin

(Sony/BMG)

**

In short: Throwaway, but mostly harmless.

SOAPIE star-turned singer Tammin Sursok - now just Tammin - finally delivers the album she's been threatening to release for two years.

After deliberating for so long, and enlisting an army of top-notch Top 40 producers (who've worked with everyone from Britney Spears and Natalie Imbruglia to Christina Aguilera), it's fair to expect a lot.

To the ex-Home & Away actress's credit, she is trying to say something; whether it's important or not is entirely up to the listener.

Obviously targeting her music at adolescent girls, Tammin, 21, has taken a leaf out of Imbruglia's book (almost to the point of plagiarism with the Torn rip-off Something Better). Singles Whatever Will Be and Pointless Relationship are typical radio-friendly fare, but the vibrant Almost Me and Around The World offer promising, poppy moments. It's a mostly inoffensive debut.