If a flying saucer ever lands on the roof of Buckingham Palace, we won’t have to go far to find our perfect human to handle First Contact. We’ll want to impress, mind. Demonstrate our humanity and empathy. So step forward Space Man, national treasure, top hugger and prism of all our hopes and dreams, Eurovision slayer, Sam Ryder!
Sam, 34, knows his way around the palace grounds, having performed at the Party at the Palace for Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in June 2022. Best of all, he’s a true believer in little green men. Or some form of alien life, at least. “Oh, I believe,” he says. “I think believing that there's life out there is an optimistic view because if there is life out there, chances are it's been around a lot longer than us. And that means that they've lived this long, and it gives hope for us.”
Sam is a guest judge of a new competition from The LEGO Group and Goonhilly Earth Space Station, asking kids around the UK to send a recording describing their dream outer space adventure.
The winner will have it broadcast into the universe via transmission. It makes Sam and his inner child gleeful. “I’ve got these memories of like, walking around in Tescos and getting all the cardboard boxes. You know, they used to stack them near the exits?” he says. “I’d bring them home and I remember putting old washing machine pipe on them - it kind of looked like silver robot arms.
Brit Eurovision contestant Olly Alexander came 18th in the contest final on 11 May 2024 scoring 46 jury points (13th) but zero from the public vote ((Image: GETTY))“Everything I've written about wanting to be an astronaut, it’s all true. It came from those years and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since.” All that imagination and awe was fed by the likes of Brian Cox and Carl Sagan on the telly. These people, “when they’re eloquent and they're talking about space, it makes your worries down here feel real sort of… not insignificant because that feels like you're minimising it, but just kind of puts it in perspective,” he says. Sam’s own launchpad was Lockdown, those otherworldly days when we were all adrift in space, with the world silent and no-one - well maybe the neighbours - to hear us scream.
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He began uploading TikTok videos of himself singing covers, and liftoff! “I was living with my parents because I was starting to renovate my first house with my partner and it was a total heap so we couldn't live in it,” he says. “So I went to live with my parents, all together. It was so nice walking around fields that I hadn't walked around since I was a kid, swimming in the river. It was proper Swiss Family Robinson.
And reconnecting with all these things I used to do when I was growing up really reinvigorates your imagination. “I was singing in a wedding band, three times a week sometimes. So filming myself singing into my phone was just to keep my practice up and just to have fun, and singing is sort of escapism for me.”
Space Man, the song that sent Sam into the stratosphere, and stunned a nation more used to nil points by finishing runner-up in Eurovision 2022, was born of those driftless days.
He wrote it as we, the country, began to emerge from Covid. “I remember the streets were quiet, but it was a really sunny, lovely day,” he says. “And we're in a studio, and one of us Zoomed in, again because of COVID, so there's three of us, one on Zoom and two in the room. “Space Man was definitely inspired by that need for connection, and sometimes looking outside of yourself for connection when really it's there all along.”
At Eurovision the song was pipped by Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra in a year when all sympathies were with the country, recently invaded by Russia. How are those guys?” They’re absolutely smashing it,” says Sam.
“I couldn't be happier for them because they really are a great bunch of guys.” Since that heady Eurovision, it’s been depressing business as usual for team UK. Mae Muller sank without a trace in the Liverpool contest hosted on behalf of Ukraine. This year, too, proper pop star Olly Alexander met his Eurovision Waterloo. What went wrong?
Sam Ryder with Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, Rita Ora at the closing ceremony for the Invictus Games (Getty Images for the Invictus Ga)
Sam Ryder has lots of showbiz fans including singer Pink photographed on Instagram“I'm just not the right person to ask,” Sam protests. “I'm just a fan of Eurovision, like so many bother people. In my year I didn't listen to any of the songs until the actual final night and it was the exact same this year.
“I haven’t been on social media since January because I've been in my studio making the next album.
"So I've been totally unplugged from the buildup in the Eurovision world. I just watched it, like so many other people, with respect that they have the guts to get up on that stage! There’s, what? 100 odd million people watching down that camera lens when you look at it, and you get these few seconds of quiet before your song comes in. And I remember that moment. In your mind you have to really have your spiritual armament up because if you start thinking, ‘oh my god that many people are watching’, your voice starts to quiver and then you're done for so I have so much respect for Olly and every single participant.”
But Space Man was special. “There was a feeling in the room when we wrote it,” he says. “A feeling that we were tapped into the magic because the song sort of came out on its own accord. It just sort of materialised in 10 minutes. “Some songs you write in 10 minutes aren't always good, but this one was and you could feel it in the room. I think there was something really magic, like the stars aligned for us at that moment in time.” He points out, though, that the song “came out before it went on Eurovision and it's not like it went to the top of the charts or anything like that.”
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It isn’t a humble brag. “That didn't take away how special the song was for me,” he says, “because, again, we're so obsessed with winning in metrics like getting a number one or being the top streaming song or a viral hit or something like that. That doesn't stop the song being special.”
Sam has teamed up with The LEGO Group to launch a new nationwide competition to give kids the chance to transmit their messages into space (PR HANDOUT)Revisiting Eurovision, he says, is a bit like a school reunion. The mind boggles. What school did he go to that had fit men writhing in the loos, teachers with no trousers on and a witch flirting with a devil behind the bike sheds?!
“It feels like your school year in a way as time goes on,” he says. “You can just transport yourself back by listening to the playlist of all the songs on that night and I can just picture everything from the first song on the playlist that kicked off the show. I remember the lights going down for that. It’s visceral, the closest I have to being transported back to those school memories that are so ingrained in your psyche.”
Now festival season is beckoning along with work on that second album. “Festival season is the water cooler in the office,” he says, “because that is the only time your path crosses with people that work so closely in your industry.”
With the album, he’s feeling the creative pressure but breathing through it. He has no time for impostor syndrome. “I really try not to entertain those sort of thoughts because I think impostor syndrome, while I respect that a lot of people have it… if you're not careful with something like that, you're dancing with not being grateful for what I've been blessed with, that so many people would give anything for.
“It’s your responsibility to remind yourself that you're not necessarily special, you're incredibly fortunate. I spent 15 years trying to get to the position that I am at now. And any moment not spent in gratitude for finally being here would in my opinion, be a moment wasted.” See? Highly evolved human, which will be handy when the Greys finally arrive… With NASA admitting the existence of Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, it could be soon so it’s lucky that Sam does quite fancy a trip into outer space.
“If it’s a one-way trip, I’m not sure I’d be up for that,” he laughs. “I'd wanna wait until interstellar travel was possible. If it's even possible. I'm sure it will be in the far distant future. ”But right now it seems a little bit rudimentary. I need it to get more into what science fiction is currently. If the past is anything to go by, science fiction usually leads the way for truth.”
While very far from a gutter, he’s always staring at the stars. “I remember distinctly coming home from gigs when I’d had a particularly bad one or a really bad day at work when I was working in construction or weddings, and I used to drive home in the early hours of the morning and on a clear night - I lived out in the countryside so the stars were just like, blazing - it just made me feel like it wasn't all that bad.
”If I just stood for a second, and especially in the winter when Orion's Belt is out, it takes you to another place.
“We spend a lot of time with our heads down in screens and stuff like that. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for the habit and the negative ones, but it’d be nice to turn that around a little bit and face them up to the stars at night and just have a bit of wonder.”
He’s keen on making this particular ball in space that we call home a better place.“There's a lot of power that we each have to change our own little world within this world,” he says. “The immediate orbit around you. Like going forth with love and kindness andgratitude… passing that positive effect on, can only help to change the world.”
And of course, while we wait for the aliens to show themselves, there’s one other small task, Sam Ryder could perform for this nation… enter Eurovision a second time! It worked for two-time winners, Ireland’s Johnny Logan and Sweden’s Loreen, who triumphed last year after also winning in 2012.
Come on Sam. We need you…
- Sam has teamed up with The LEGO Group to launch a new nationwide competition to give kids the chance to transmit their messages into space. The ‘Message To Space’ competition is open from 4th June – 1st July 2024 via: www.lego.com/en-gb/space/message-to-space
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