‘Lorraine Kelly ended my career – now I’m charting pop star 25 years later’

She’s doing much better now.

Lorraine Kelly’s team led to a pop star losing their record contract (Image: ITV)

Singer Alexis Strum has taken to social media to encourage people to follow their dreams as her album Addicted has finally charted almost a quarter of a century after she recorded it. Speaking in a video on Instgram she posted a caption on it saying: “I used to be a popstar and was cancelled by Lorraine Kelly’s team but Popjustice!”

Sitting in her car as she spoke she told viewers: “Not a lot of you will know this, but I used to be a pop star around 20 odd years ago, and I had an album called Addicted that was supposed to come out on Warner Records, and it didn’t for various reasons.
Basically, I got dropped, so that album never ever came out. I signed another record deal with Universal Records that didn’t come out. I went and had a life. I did other things. Anyways, couple of weeks ago, we finally released Addicted on CD and vinyl, and it actually entered the charts,” she squealed before cutting to an image of the official chart positions to confirm her statement.

Alexis Strum took to Isntagram to share her excitment about her chart position (Image: Alexis Strum Instagram)

She continued: “And we did down the limited release. We didn’t have any spend for marketing, we didn’t have any spend for radio promotions, press TV. This was entirely fan driven… And it’s done really well, and I’ve got my own little profile now on the official charts.

“I’ve waited 25 years for pretty much, so if you’re watching this and you’re thinking I can’t do it, I’m too old, I’m too this, I’m too that, whatever. Do the thing. Sod it. People are going to come on here and troll me. I don’t even care. Do you know what I mean? Just do the thing. We did it. We had faith.

“People loved the story. People connected. People enjoyed the music, ultimately, and we had some great gigs. I realise now that we’re building something, this community, this ‘strumsphere’, as I like to call it, we’re building something.

“And it was lovely to see people come to my gigs and make friends and go away, and now I can see [from] the interactions on Instagram and TikTok, they’ve become friends….That’s absolutely insane…It’s not about the money – probably haven’t made a penny from this – but thank you. Thank you for giving this old girl a shot, and for letting me really just enjoy myself and live my best life. It is the most joyful thing in the world for me to get on a stage and sing,” she said before reminding people the album was available to buy.

Alexi Strum starred in the BBC three show Wannabe (Image: BBC)

It has been a long road for Alexis who recorded the album in 2003. However, her career was derailed when a performance on Lorraine Kelly’s ITV show was cancelled when producers mistakenly thought a lyric in the single Addicted read: “I’m a junkie, I’ve overdosed on Chunky Monkey,” was a was a drug reference, despite it actually referring to her favourite Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavour.

Although she signed another record deal in 2005 with Universal that too failed to work out when her singles didn’t chart. Undeterred she continued to work in the business and was the songwriter, and one of the voices, in the UK indie group Bo Pepper who were named New Band of the Week by The Guardian in April 2008.

She also continued songwriting, with her music being recorded by other bands and used in TV shows such as The Inbetweeners and Vital Signs.

She also turned her hand to acting In 2011 and 2012, Strum toured the UK playing Eva Cassidy’s sister, Margaret, in the musical Over the Rainbow – The Eva Cassidy Story. In 2018 she played Sarah the Brass in the BBC Three series Wannabe.

Express.co.uk has contacted ITV for comment.