and Mullerthe UK Eurovision Song Contest contender in May shared some details about her intensive preparation schedule for the upcoming contest, speaking with Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary on ITV’s This Morning.
“I’m rehearsing a lot,” Muller said. “The preparation is wild. We have these kind of pre-parties where you get to perform the songs, so I feel ready now, but I feel like I’m going to be locked in on May 13.
The 25-year-old North London-elevated singer will be the UK’s first female newcomer ever since Surie participated in the Storm course in 2018.
Like Ryder, Muller is not new to the music industry. She released her debut single Close in 2018 and climbed the charts with 2021 song Better Days after it went viral on TikTok.
At this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, she’ll be singing a new song she wrote called I Wrote A Song (yes, it sounds like the title of a song in a Eurovision spoof movie, but we’re all for it).
“I actually wrote the song before the possibility of the Eurovision Song Contest arose,” Muller explained on the morning show. “It was literally like the stars aligned, because two or three days later I met management and they said, what do you think of Eurovision?”
Here are five facts you need to know about the UK hopeful.
As a teenager she devoted herself entirely to music
Muller was born in 1997 in Kentish townNorth London, and has described herself as a natural performer from an early age.
Last year, she told the Golden Plectrum website that her aunt is a music video director and she used to spend afternoons running for chart hits like Labrinth.
Muller was 19 when she wrote her first song, Close, which was produced by a family friend and “paid for” with wine instead of money.
Once uploaded to Soundcloud, the song caught the attention of record labels and signed them to Capitol.
Speaking about starting music at age 19, she previously said, “I feel really lucky to have lived a relatively normal life in a way.”
Female solo artists have played an important role in her development
Muller inherited a love from Prince and Sade from her parents, with both artists regularly played in the house.
Only later did she discover it Gwen Stephani and the No Doubt star’s debut solo album, Love Angel Music Baby (released in 2004), which she began to develop her own taste for.
Florence + The Machine and Lilly Allen were also early favorites and would shape her own songwriting in years to come.
TikTok played an important role in her breakthrough
Muller has scored one minor hit so far: the 2021 song Better Days that was made with Swedish producers Neiked and American rapper Polo G.
The track went viral on TikTok, pushing its streams to over a million across all platforms. Better Days peaked at number 32 in the UK, but also charted worldwide.
This is similar to Sam Ryder’s route to the Eurovision Song Contest. Ryder also found success on TikTok, covering pop songs during the lockdown before being selected to compete in the UK.
Muller was chosen by the same music company that scouted Ryder
The BBC hopes to repeat the UK’s success at the 2022 event by once again partnering with global management company TaP Music.
TaP Music, that counted King’s wool And Ellie Goulding among its clients, helped select Muller, and will also help formulate its pre-match promotion strategy.
Last year, the company revised its UK strategy after years of dismal results – and the new approach paid off: Sam Ryder came in second.
This new strategy included playing Ryder’s single Space Man on BBC Radio 1 instead of Radio 2 and also targeting smaller countries such as San Marino, Serbia, Croatia And Maltawhich have the same voting rights as larger countries such as Germany.
Muller was born in the year that the United Kingdom last won the Eurovision Song Contest
The UK last triumphed at the contest in 1997 with Katrina And The Waves topping the leaderboard with their anthem Love Shine A Light in Dublin. That victory will seem a long way off to Muller, who was born the same year, but she still hopes to mirror that success with her own song, I Wrote A Song.
The Eurovision Song Contest takes place from May 9 to May 13