Stagedoor Sessions: Tawiah cover’s Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’

Following our previous releases from Gareth Esson and Christina Marie, we’re proud to bring you the latest in our ‘Stagedoor Sessions’ series of acoustic video performances, in partnership with leading YouTube channel Ont’Sofa.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to introduce you to Tawiah. Needing little by way of introduction for those closely-engrained with the UK soul scene, we first heard Tawiah way back in 2008 during her support slot for Estelle at London’s iTunes Festival. Fast-forward six years, the young British singer/songwriter is readying her first commercial album (set to land next year), following various dazzling EPs, so we invited her down earlier this week to record a couple of tracks with her guitarist Ben Jones.

The first, a rousing cover of Whitney Houston’s iconic 1987 hit I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Admittedly, when we first heard that Tawiah was to cover such a mammoth song, we were somewhat worried…. however our fears were put to rest less than a couple of bars in.

Catch the full performance below; we’ve also put the audio up on Soundcloud after the vid (for those who want to add it to their playlists), and make sure you hit the iTunes link to download Tawiah’s brilliant debut EP In Jodi’s Bedroom.