“Welcome to my hooooome,” SuRie deadpans, before bursting into laughter. We are meeting ahead of the Eurovision final in Lisbon, and the UK’s contestant is perched on a velvet-upholstered chair in the opulent Portuguese embassy in London. She throws herself into the role of tour guide with aplomb. “If you see this tapestry,” she says, gesturing to a floor-to-ceiling artwork of a fleet of ships, “it depicts a voyage from Lisbon to the UK, and now I’m doing the reverse. I think there’s a lovely link.”
Today, SuRie, 29, is wearing roomy black athleisure; her candyfloss-coloured hair is cut into a short crop like Katy Perry’s. In the past her music has skewed slightly alternative, and pre-Eurovision she released a heartfelt piano-led cover of Jeff Buckley’s Lover, You Should’ve Come Over. But her current song, Storm, flips that 180 degrees: it’s a distillation of EDM and 90s dance that feels slightly dated but has the nefarious sticking power of an ad jingle. “Storms don’t last for ever,” SuRie belts out stagily, bringing to mind all those divas who have sung of making it through the rain to welcome a new day.
“It means a lot to me,” she says of her song. “I need a reminder sometimes to keep my chin up and keep perspective. If we come together, concentrating on love and positivity, we can get through it all.”
SuRie’s hope is that her posi-pop earworm will be enough to give the UK its first Eurovision win since Katrina and the Waves’ Love Shine a Light back in 1997. Even the most dedicated fan of the contest would find it hard to deny that the UK has dropped the ball in recent years, with unmemorable entries from Blue, Bonnie Tyler and last year’s balladeer, Lucie Jones. “I don’t know what the problem is,” SuRie says. “But I hope to be a small cog in that wheel of trying to improve the reputation.”
SuRie, born Susanna Cork, grew up in Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire. She started playing the piano at the age of three, and claims she understood music notation before she could read. “My first language was those dots and lines and scribbles,” she says. Inspired by songwriters such as Billy Joel and Alicia Keys, she started writing her own compositions and had aspirations of signing to the indie label Bella Union. When that didn’t work out, she did a stint at the Royal Academy of Music, worked as a backing vocalist and took jobs as a pianist in jazz lounges and hotel atriums to pay the rent.
She has also earned her Eurovision stripes. She performed as a backing singer and dancer for Belgian synthpop artist Loïc Nottet in 2015 (“An indescribable buzz,” she says) and was the musical director for last year’s Belgian entry by the gloom-pop teen Blanche. She had been working on 2018 Eurovision entries at songwriting camps last year, before the BBC approached her to sing Storm. She became the UK’s contestant this February after winning a public vote on Eurovision: You Decide. “I was bowled over,” she says. “I couldn’t even process thoughts or sentences.”
SuRie is unfailingly chirpy company. The only time her smile tightens is at the mention of a tweet in which she seemed less than positive about Theresa May. “I’m working for BBC now,” she says, her eyes anxiously flickering to a nearby publicist. “I should remain impartial with some of my opinions.” She also dismisses the suggestion that Brexit might hinder European goodwill towards the UK on Saturday. “It’s all about the songs,” she insists. “The audience couldn’t care less what flag their neighbour is waving. They’re just there to celebrate a love of music.” So how does she rate her chances of winning? “Is that even a possibility?” she wonders, before her smile brightens again. “Anything’s possible at Eurovision!”
