The UK song and entrant and were revealed on March 10th.The entry and entrant was revealed by Scott Mills on BBC Radio 1's breakfast show with Greg James followed by a performance on "The One Show on BBC One. Going to Turin will be Sam Ryder with the song "Space Man".
Sam Ryder Robinson, better known as Sam Ryder, began his career on the rock and metal circuit as a singer and rhythm guitarist. He fronted groups like the Morning After and Blessed by a Broken Heart before starting a solo career as a pop artist. During the lockdown of 2020, he started posting short videos of himself singing and his popularity skyrocketed. He has posted videos on youtube and tracks on sound cloud but has garnered the most fan interest on video sharing app TikTok. After this resurgence, he was signed to Parlophone, which issued a number of tracks in 2021 and 2022. His more recent work has been pop based but has a strong and raspy rock-edged tone.
(This is based on the shorter version as performed on The One Show rather than the official video)
This entry has a very, very basic structure with verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus-outro. The song starts very promptly straight into verse one and sounds almost acapella which really hones the listener to the different textures of his voice. During the chorus he is joined by a drum rhythm but everything else still feels quite low in the mix. This feeling continues during verse two an the chorus but this time ends with some slightly sinister strings and pulls the mood slightly down into the bridge. This part uses his lower range as has a slightly Beatles feel to it helped by a really full feeling to the music. For the last 50 seconds or so we have renditions of parts of the chorus as the backing track lowly wands down to almost acapella once again.
Sam has a very distinct voice which is absolutely shown off in its best light. The lyric journey is also very clever as it works on a surface level - actually being a space man - as well as being a metaphor for winding your way through life. Either way I feel many people will be able to bond with this as the language is easy to understand and uses repetition and rhyme. If I had any complaints about the track I would like to see more guitar or at least more light and shade throughout the whole song - not just during the last minute. The tune feels very familiar but not in a kind of 'rip-off' way and is very radio friendly. This track was Radio 1's 'song of the week' on the lead up to it being revealed at the Eurovision entry. I have no fear that Sam with kill this song on the night and will go down a storm in the hall but does this song compel the people at home to vote? It's probably the best chance we've had for a while and will be hugely dependent on the staging. I actually don't think this needs a lot of staging and could work well with just him and a backdrop as well as nailing his looks to camera. Unfortunately the UK's track record of getting staging right is very poor and can see this as defeat snatched from the hands of victory (victory being not in the bottom 5)
ARTIST - Sam Ryder
SONG - Space Man
WRITING/PRODUCTION CREDITS - KOZ, Sam Ryder, Amy Wadge, Max Wolfgang
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