‘Taxi Driver’ made me famous at 16

Many Nigerians remember Mandy Brown-Ojugbana as the unmistakable voice behind the 1980s cover of Bobby Benson’s 1950s highlife classic, ‘Taxi Driver’.

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Released in 1986, the song became an instant hit and firmly positioned the teenage singer as one of the defining pop voices of that era.

After years away from the spotlight, Mandy Brown has highlighted key moments in her rise to fame at just 16 as well as her debut album, ‘Breakthrough’, a project she described as both a creative awakening and a spiritual journey.

While the album featured several tracks, including ‘Working Girl’, ‘Greatest Love of All’, ‘Making Love’, ‘Touch Me’, ‘Man Hunting’, ‘She’s A Picture’ and ‘Taxi Driver – Answer To’, it was her reimagining of ‘Taxi Driver’ that defined the era and her career.

The veteran singer has also announced her return to music, reopening conversations about a career that surprised many, especially her peers.

Game changer

When the ‘Breakthrough’ was released with ‘Taxi Driver’ as its lead track, she recalls that the time that it took for her to have an impact with that album was like the blink of an eye.

She recalled that within four weeks of playing ‘Taxi Driver’, it was a massive hit. According to her, she went from being a nobody, totally unrecognisable, to a somebody, and that was a rollercoaster in itself.

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“When ‘Breakthrough’ hit the Nigerian music scene, it became a smash hit and completely changed my life. Now I’m rereleasing music for the first time since then,” she wrote on Instagram.

Rise to fame

In a serialised expose on her Instagram page, Mandy describes her early rise to fame as “astonishing, exciting, and overwhelming.”

“The Nigerian music scene in the 80s—what a buzz. “I was suddenly thrust into the limelight alongside people like Fela Kuti, Sade Adu, Onyeka Onwenu, Charly Boy, and Tina Onwundiwe. Everybody was doing their own succinct flavour of music. It was overwhelming, but it was also a wonderful time to be creative,” she recalls.

Ironically, her discovery did not follow the traditional route. Before music executives formally signed her, Mandy had already become a familiar face in Nigerian tabloids.

She said, “The 80s were wild, but also still religious. It’s a crazy one. I was a page-three girl before I was discovered—discovered. Not the naked kind. Back then, page three was about personality. I’d wear a T-shirt, pose, and that was it.

“I was recording my album whilst also still jumping rules in school, buying mama put on the streets. By this time, I’d even done a few shows, you know, been around the place, just being a young human being whilst embarking on this amazing career.

Almost like a split personality. In fact, I’m sure that my classmates must have wondered what was going on when I finally came out onto the scene because I was just a normal person until suddenly, poof!”

The ‘Taxi Driver’ effect

Mandy admits she had little understanding of what she was stepping into.

“I mean, I’d gone from running around and playing truancy to being signed to a record label. And I was just told, OK, get on with it, what have you got, what can you sing, what can you produce?

I had notes that I scribbled when I was nine years old, and poetry, and I just got all that stuff together, and we decided that we wanted to go sort of Afro-pop and focus on Bobby Benson’s song Taxi Driver.

“So it was very much free-flowing, free-willed, kind of like a spiritual journey to see what would come out. There wasn’t much control, which allowed me to be really creative,” the media personality revealed.

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She further stated that the album felt pressured because the producers realised they had a hit on their hands with ‘Taxi Driver’.

“‘Taxi Driver’ was the heart of the album, so it was working around Taxi Driver and creating songs that would work alongside Taxi Driver.

“‘Taxi Driver’ was and will always be a golden oldie, even if you go back 40-50 years and listen to the original, the essence is there, and that essence has been and can continue to be translated into a fresh sound,” Mandy noted.