Sam Ryder looks like your standard rock star. Long hair and beard, ripped shorts and T-shirt, a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse tattoo on his right arm.
But after a few minutes in his company you notice something different about him. The manners. The politeness. The earnestness.
‘I’ve met a few big names who go stiff or just glaze over when they meet new people and I promised myself I will never do that. I want to be grateful for every moment of this,’ he beams.
After coming second at Eurovision 2022 with his hit Space Man, many labelled the now 36-year-old Essex-born singer as a good egg who was simply pleased to be given a chance to perform.
Ryder had already won a legion of celebrity fans two years previously after posting TikTok videos of himself singing in his garden shed during lockdown. Renditions of Sia’s Elastic Heart and Alicia Keys’ If I Ain’t Got You earned him plaudits from megastars like Justin Bieber and Keys herself.
Top, trousers and shoes, Emporio Armani. Necklace, Tilly Sveaas
‘Hands down, getting a message from Justin Bieber for singing in a shed is probably the weirdest thing that will ever happen to me,’ he says. (Bieber’s message, if you wondered, told Ryder that he’d seen his cover of Elastic Heart and had liked it so much he’d texted it to Sia herself. Sia would later repost Ryder’s cover, with the caption: ‘We all think you’re amazing! Well done dude! I love you, keep going! @samhairwolfryder.’)
I think Bieber, Sia and Keys were reacting to two things. First, Ryder’s stunning falsetto (Keys admitted to Ryder even she finds it hard hitting the high notes of If I Ain’t Got You). Second was his unaffected love of performance and his gratitude for every moment in the spotlight. Ryder reveals what’s behind his sunny outlook between glugs from a water bottle.
‘My faith gives me that energy,’ he says. ‘I grew up Catholic and my mum and dad also instilled a belief in good manners, kindness and putting your heart and soul into everything. That spiritual side of me is who I am. I am not a theologian with a deep knowledge of the Bible, I’m just saying when I’ve struggled, prayer has been important to me.’
Before those TikTok videos and Eurovision, Ryder was a wedding singer, working part-time as a carpenter with his dad to make ends meet.
‘Long ago, I accepted making my own music, becoming a star, that’s just not going to happen,’ he says. ‘A tough pill to swallow but you have to square that with yourself. You have to not get angry or bitter but instead be grateful for what you do have.’
But, of course, Ryder did make it. Last month he released a new album, Heartland, telling the tale of what happens when your wishes come true.
Top and trousers, Reiss. Rings, Lara Stafford-Deitsch Jewellery. Bracelet, Sam’s own
‘I’m the last person to ever complain about getting my break,’ he adds. ‘But the last couple of years have definitely tested me in ways I could never have foreseen. I’ve relied on prayer a lot.’
Ryder was born in Maldon, Essex, to Keith, a carpenter, and mum Geraldine, a dental assistant. He attended a local Catholic school and then had something of an epiphany when, aged 12, he went to see American punk band Sum 41 play in London. ‘That night I decided, “This is the life I want.”’
He began a school band called The Morning After and in his late teens joined Close Your Eyes, a US-based Christian punk band that toured all over Europe, the US, South America, even Russia.
‘What is a Christian punk band? Well, you’re angry that life is hard but always with the message that it’ll be OK in the end,’ he explains. ‘I definitely went through a stage of kicking against being made to go to church on Sunday. It’s what teenagers do.’
Ryder paid his dues, touring until he was broke, then returning to earn money working with his dad. By his early 20s, though, members of Close Your Eyes were losing interest and getting regular jobs, so Ryder decided to perform at weddings back home in Essex. He sang songs by Ed Sheeran and James Arthur with a band of local musicians, earning £1,200 a time.
‘It was a real apprenticeship, too. For a while the punk gigs and the wedding gigs overlapped so I’d be shouting and screaming my punk repertoire during the week and then on a Saturday trying to hit the high notes of a Michael Jackson song. My voice was totally shredded but that’s how you learn your craft.’
Jacket, shirt, trousers and shoes, Emporio Armani. Necklace, Tilly Sveaas
Ryder witnessed plenty of wedding punch-ups and meltdowns. But then, in 2020, Covid ended this career lifeline, too. Miraculously it was the decision to record that Sia TikTok video in his garden shed in May that year that finally launched him. ‘I’m the longest overnight success story in music ever,’ he says, laughing.
We are meeting in an East London club. Ryder is an engaging bundle of energy. One of his heroes, Justin Hawkins, singer with The Darkness, compared Ryder to an excitable, wet-nosed labrador when he met him. I can confirm this. Ryder wants to know if I’m hungry or thirsty, how far I’ve come, and how I am. He’s charming company who obviously inspires loyalty. I also meet his friend Derek; the pair first met 15 years ago when Derek offered Ryder a lift. Now he’s his manager.
They’ve been through a lot together. Those performances on TikTok helped Ryder – for the two years between 2020 and 2022 – become the most-followed UK artist on the platform. (He has 14.3 million followers on TikTok and 4 million on Instagram.)
By 2020 Ryder found himself signed to Parlophone records, home of such legends as the Beatles and Blur. And, in 2022, there was Eurovision. Ryder got scouted for the job by TaP Music management – who used to work with Dua Lipa – they’d heard about him through Lipa’s producer Koz, who was also working with Ryder.
Plenty of British artists see Eurovision as a massively poisoned chalice. Not Ryder. Two months after he came second to Ukraine, he told a journalist, ‘Eurovision was never something that should have been looked at with disdain. It’s a congregation of joy.’ And, as if to prove the poisoned chalice assertions wrong, in December 2022 Ryder released a number one debut album, There’s Nothing But Space, Man!.
Performing in the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final, Turin, 2022
But things changed suddenly in 2023. Despite this huge success, and just before a major show at the Eventim Apollo, in London’s Hammersmith, Ryder got a call: his record label was ‘restructuring’ and there would be a ‘leadership change’. The Parlophone co-presidents, who Ryder had been signed by, left, and different directors were hired. Ryder would be in the hands of new people. He took the decision to leave. At the time the split was said to be ‘amicable’. It doesn’t sound like that today. ‘Most people working at a record company love music but ultimately they work for shareholders who love profit,’ he says. ‘Those two things are not the same.’
As quickly as his dreams had come true they seemed to be evaporating. But Ryder fought back. In August 2024, key staff from his old record company Parlophone (co-president Nick Burgess and former general manager Jack Melhuish) announced a new independent label called Artist Theory. Ryder joined them. He also built a recording studio, with the help of his dad, at the house he owns in Essex, and began recording his new album.
Well, one half of it anyway. For the other half he moved to Nashville, Tennessee – where he bought a house with his girlfriend of 14 years, Lois Gaskin-Barber, a 33-year-old jewellery designer. (The couple met in a bar in London, and went on to operate a vegan organic juice bar in Essex called Lone Wolves Organics. The woman who took over the venture from them described the duo as ‘a pair of hippies… He [Sam] is horizontal, he is so chilled.’ )
Jacket and jeans, Noah Harry Palmer
Ryder has said that Gaskin-Barber was his ‘first real girlfriend’. Before then he was only interested in music and life on the road – not girls. And, he clarified in an interview this August, ‘I was awkward, with braces and a mullet; nobody was coming forward!’
Moving to Tennessee had always been sort-of a plan. ‘On our first ever date Lois and I had walked through London, and she asked me: “What’s your dream?” I said: “To write music in Nashville.” The following year we visited and we’ve been back every year since. So last year I decided: let’s do this properly. Not visit as tourists but move there, record with locals, borrow their power tools, immerse ourselves in the community.’
Ryder sorted the appropriate visas and bought a five-bedroom log cabin on the bank of the Cumberland River (he now lives there part-time, when he’s not at his home in Essex). He put a 1920s grand piano in the living room and had local pest control get rid of potentially lethal brown recluse spiders. Then he began writing music.
The result, Heartland, showcases what he calls ‘frontier soul’. It’s grittier, harder and, yes, more soulful, than anything he’s done before. The title track includes the lyric: ‘Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness…’ I say that it feels like Ryder putting the world on notice that ‘Mr Nice Guy’ has been retired.
With partner Lois Gaskin-Barber, 2023
‘I love you saying that, because this album is about truth, truth, truth. That song is about how it’s very easy to be the smiling, happy caricature when you’ve never really been tested. Well, I’ve been tested now. Can you still smile when you’re constantly getting knocked down? That’s when you see a person’s true character. And I have been knocked down.’ It’s true, he has – by Parlophone and by his own self-doubts. It seems the perma-grinning ingénue who wowed a global audience of at least 160 million at Eurovision in a spangly jumpsuit wasn’t quite so happy-go-lucky after all.
‘My dreams came true, but I didn’t realise the baggage that comes with it. After Eurovision my internal monologue was saying: “Get off the stage – you shouldn’t be here.” I’d started comparing myself to others and I never thought I’d be that person. But I’m happy I went through those dark times because they got me closer to my faith.’
Ryder carried a Union Jack on stage at Eurovision. Recently flying the flag has been the subject of intense political debate, with some councils even removing the flag from public spaces. Ryder somehow made being uncool look cool.
‘Trying to act cool is boring isn’t it?’ he says. ‘I ran out on stage in Turin [the venue for Eurovision 2022] with my uncle’s Territorial Army parade flag.
He’d have been absolutely buzzing to see that, but there was no negativity intended. At school I was crap at football, so I was never going to represent my country for that. But I’m just so proud to be born and raised in the UK and to sing for my country, especially as a kid who thought he was never going to get a chance to make it.’
People assume Eurovision pays big money. In fact the winner gets a glass-microphone trophy. As the runner-up, Ryder got a smaller version. When he talks about ‘making it’ Ryder’s values are a little different to those of other rock stars.
‘I don’t want to live my life just trying to become wealthy,’ he says. ‘There has to be a purpose. Sure, trying to get a number-one album for the first time is exciting. But after that there’s no nutrition for the spirit. I want to help people in the position I was in who thought they would never make it.’
Apart from buying his Nashville cabin, Ryder says his lifestyle hasn’t changed. He drives the same car he used as a wedding singer: a 2015 Honda HR-V.
‘And I’m surrounded by a team who live normal lives because I’ve seen what happens when people don’t. Some big stars withdraw into their own world. I’m just a tattooed hairy guy from a garden shed!’
Ryder goes further, explaining he intends to refuse the luxury that is considered the rock star’s due. For example, he prefers to travel economy with the band’s roadies. ‘I flew business once because it was offered to me and I was travelling alone,’ he says. ‘But I will not do something that others cannot afford to do. That takes you away from everyone.
‘I don’t mind spending money on the studio or anything music related, but buying a sports car? Imagine that icky feeling of pulling up in a car no one else can relate to – horrible!’
Ryder might find staying grounded a challenge. His new album is full of potential hits, some of them co-written by Ed Sheeran’s collaborator Steve Mac. Ryder and Sheeran have shared similar routes to the top. Both paid dues as couch-surfing troubadours and their paths have nearly crossed many times. In 2019, Ryder narrowly lost a talent contest for which the prize was a support slot on a Sheeran tour. Then in 2023, a song he co-wrote for the Apple TV series Ted Lasso called Fought & Lost was pipped to an Emmy by a Sheeran composition.
‘To lose to Ed is an honour. I also lost out to Harry Styles for my first number one and I lost out on a Brit Award to Wet Leg. It’s about who you lose to; you cannot be p**sed off losing to legends like those.’
That sounds like ‘nice guy’ Sam Ryder. Isn’t Ed Sheeran his nemesis? ‘No. Steve texted him saying I wanted to collaborate and Ed messaged saying, “I want to work with him too.”’
Interesting. Didn’t Ryder tell Elizabeth Day’s How To Fail podcast earlier this year that there were ‘forces’ keeping the two singers apart?
‘There were definitely things in place stopping us having a relationship, even though we wanted to. But there’s nothing but love between him and our camp. We’re going to work together next year. It wasn’t possible before but now it is. And that’s the theme for me now. I never believed I’d get the chance to do any of this, and it’s been a long road. But here I am, entering my golden period.’
12 MORE COOL CHRISTIANS
Stormzy, 32 Hosts a weekly Bible study group at his home in Kingston Upon Thames.
Bukayo Saka, 24 The England footballer, talking to GQ, said that his Bible is a ‘life essential’ he cannot live without.
Dermot O’Leary, 52 Says that Christianity is part of his everyday life and that he prays every evening.
Hailey and Justin Bieber, 28 and 31 They say their shared evangelicalism is the ‘most important part’ of their marriage.
David Oyelowo, 49 The Oxford-born actor has attended Baptist church since 16 and dedicated his Critics Choice Award to god, ‘the centre of my life’.
Adam Peaty, 30 The Olympian says that attending church every Sunday brings ‘fulfilment and peace’.
Gavin Casalegno, 26 The star of Amazon’s most-watched series, The Summer I Turned Pretty, posts Bible readings to his seven million Instagram followers.
JB Gill, 38 A former JLS and Strictly star, who now presents Songs Of Praise, he says his faith is ‘the most important thing in my life’.
Nick Cave, 68 Says he ‘found solace’ after his son’s death by returning to the Anglican church.
Bear Grylls, 51 Published Soul Fuel: A Daily Devotional about his faith in 2021.
Letitia Wright, 31 The James Bond actress says her relationship with Jesus saved her life after a battle with depression.
Coco Gauff, 21 The Gen Z tennis star thanked her ‘lord and saviour Jesus Christ’ after the Madrid Open.
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