As Eurovision concluded last night there was one performance all night that dominated the rest and ironically, it was none of the acts scheduled and entered into the competition as Sam Ryder dominates Eurovision… AGAIN.
Sam Ryder who performed at last year’s show with his hit song Space Man came agonisingly close to giving the United Kingdom their first win at Eurovision since 1997.
Sam, unfortunately, lost out to Ukraine in last year’s show but this was during the Russia and Ukraine conflict so naturally this took importance as the world united and came together to support Ukraine.
Space Man was the stand-out song of the evening and in the eyes of many around the world, Sam was the real winner of Eurovision in terms of talent on stage.
Fast forward to 2023 and Sam performed an interval show with the UK represented this year by Mae Muller.
Mae’s song titled ‘I Wrote A Song‘ didn’t hit home with many as a dancey track that had microphone issues during the live performance felt flat, lifeless and very copy and paste with other acts of the night. It faded away quickly and I was extremely shocked that a song like this was chosen to be performed considering the high standard that Space Man had set the year previously.
Mae Muller comes across as a wonderful performer but the song choice just wasn’t in line with what you’d come to expect from a Eurovision-winning performance and sadly it showed as the UK was ranked second-bottom out of every single country on the night.
Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena then waited as Sam took to the stage to play his song titled ‘Mountain’.
With various dancers and artists around him with disabilities the song Mountain was an uplifting and strength-defining song that absolutely blew the roof off the building when it concluded.
Ryder puts his heart and soul into his performances and how that song delivered in both emotion and spirit was tearjerking it really was. I’ve since gone online and watched Mountain numerous times with me tearing up every single time.
Mountain portrays a song about overcoming the odds that life has given you and finding the strength through love to persevere. With the help of those around you and the inner strength that you must possess Mountain delivers heart which is more than what can be said about many acts on the evening with dancey numbers and some very weird entries indeed this year.
The beautiful lyrics combined with Sam’s passion and raw energy won the crowd over and with Queen’s Roger Taylor on the drums, you have to wonder.
Would it have won if it was entered as our 2023 entry?
I certainly think we would have come close as for me, it was the best song of the entire night and many others took to social media to say the same.
The crowd lapped it up and Twitter went into overdrive saying that Sam had well and truly ‘upstaged’ our official entry praising Sam’s raw talent.
Sweden was triumphant on the night with a total of 583 points but after watching her act, it just didn’t compare for me to Sam’s performance.
Check out Sam Ryder’s performance of Mountain below, get the tissues ready, I wasn’t expecting to be crying at 11am on a Sunday morning! Enjoy the clip as Sam Ryder dominates Eurovision… again!
