Sweet Female Attitude began life in 1996 when music manager Mike Powell, artist and DJ Shine MC and the seventeen year old Leanne Brown began writing music together. Collectively they developed a group consisting of three singers including Leanne Brown, Sarah Bridgewood and Charlene Morrison who would later leave the group in 1997. In 1998 Leanne and Sarah were joined by Shine MC and they renamed themselves to Trinity Way, leading onto their first signing which was filmed by MTV at Manchester’s ‘In The City’ event, an event organised by music Lawyer Rudy Kidd in the August of 1998.
The record deal signed with Cutfather and Joe Recordings included an album deal which would see the group travelling to Denmark to record at the Cutfather Studio’s. Two songs were chosen for immediate re-record and release, an up tempo song called ‘That’s the Way It Is’ and a ballad called ‘Flowers’, the track which was later to be remixed by Sunship and become a UK Chart hit.
In early 1999 Shine MC decided to return to his role as a songwriter leaving Leanne and Sarah to front the group. They renamed themselves as Sweet Female Attitude and continued to record and promote their tracks, approaching various record labels up and down the UK. Sarah would also leave the group that same year and Leanne was asked to either front the group alone or find a second singer which led to her holding auditions along with Mike Powell in Manchester. After a series of auditions they came across the singer and musician Catherine Cassidy who would join the group and together with Leanne, would go onto record the album ‘In Person’ in 2000.
After an initial White Label release in 1999 by Milkk Records, a subsidiary of Reverb; the Sunship mix of Flowers began to gain popularity in the London UK Garage scene. Leanne and Catherine moved to London under the management of Gordon Charlton and began to heavily promote the track. Flowers was subsequently released by by Warner Music Germany in April 2000 selling in excess of two hundred thousand copies, peaking at number two on the UK Singles Chart bringing the group a UK and European club tour, TV and radio interviews, performances on Top of the Pops, MTV, T4, Radio One’s One Big Sunday, amongst many other. They were also nominated for a Brit Award.
Following the release of Flowers Leanne and Catherine spent much of their time in Denmark and Germany recording the album. Their second single “DJ Play It” didn’t enjoy the same success as flowers and their third follow-up single, 2001’s “Don’t Tell Me” was only released in Germany. November 2001 saw their album ”In Person’’ released, again released only in Germany. Their fourth single, “Liquid Emotion”, was due to follow the album, but was pulled from release.
Flowers has been included on several Pure Garage compilation albums and is widely regarded as being an Old School Garage anthem. Their songs “Nothing To Lose”, “Dreamin’” and a remix of “Flowers” by Cutfather & Joe were added to the song list of the Xbox 360 game, Dead or Alive Xtreme 2.
Remaining close friends Leanne and Catherine would go onto pursue individual projects, Leanne took a break from music concentrating on her family and teaching career from 2002. She would later return to recording projects in 2009, recording with Catherine an unsigned single called Crazy and an unreleased version of Flowers with the Miami Superfly Boys and DJ SKT before individually pursuing their own projects. A later mix of Flowers by the DJ and Producer ‘Jamie Duggan’ would be released on Universal Music in 2009 and a release by Sam Divine and Curtis Gabriel is planned for the Summer 2015.
