Singer-songwriter Mae Muller has been announced as this year’s British entry for Eurovision, after an “extensive search” for an entrant capable of bettering last year’s runner-up, Sam Ryder, and finally bringing the title back to the UK.
The 25-year-old Londoner declared herself “so excited” to have been selected by the same process as last year, in which the BBC worked with the management and publishing company TaP Music to choose the UK entry.
Muller is no industry novice, having previously supported Little Mix on their 2019 stadium tour and had a US Top 10 hit with her platinum-selling single, Better Days. It was nominated at last year’s MTV EMAs and VMAs, and she it performed on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
She also, like Ryder before her, comes to Eurovision with an established following on TikTok and other social media. Her music has been streamed millions of times on YouTube and reached more than 2bn streams and 5.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Her entry song, entitled I Wrote a Song, was co-created with Brit-nominated songwriter Lewis Thompson, who has worked with the likes of David Guetta; and with Karen Poole, who has worked with Kylie Minogue and Lily Allen.
It includes the opening lines: “When you said you were leaving to work on your mental health/You didn’t mention the cheating, you kept that one to yourself.”
Muller said: “I’ve loved watching Eurovision all my life, so to compete in such a massive music competition is simply brilliant. I’m a huge fan of so many of the artists that have found success at Eurovision, from Abba to Måneskin. Sam Ryder was so amazing last year and proved the UK can be back on the left-hand side [the top half] of the leaderboard.”
She said she had written the song “a few months ago when I was going through a hard time and wanted to feel empowered about relationships, so for it to be chosen for this year’s UK Eurovision song is honestly a dream”. TaP Music co-founders, Ben Mawson and Ed Millett, said: “When we heard I Wrote A Song, we were really taken by its impactful message – songs as a form of therapy (a great message for the biggest song contest in the world) alongside its playful tone and uptempo, fun production.”
Born in August 1997, Muller was not alive the last time the UK won Eurovision, with Katrina and the Waves’s song Love Shine a Light earlier that year. Years of failure and occasional humiliation followed for the UK, until Ryder bagged the runner-up spot behind Ukraine at last year’s contest in Turin. He went on to have a No 1 debut album and become the first Eurovision performer to be nominated in the Brits best new artist category.
The UK will host this year’s contest on behalf of Ukraine in Liverpool in May, after event organisers said last year that it would not be safe for the winning country to host during the ongoing conflict.
Jo Charrington, co-president of EMI, called Muller “a standout talent with superstar quality. She’s bold, charismatic, fun and a mesmerising performer who has already amassed a global following through her music … We feel hugely confident Mae will deliver an iconic moment for the UK at this year’s momentous show in Liverpool.”
Other reviews of the song have been mixed, however, with BBC music correspondent Mark Savage saying his first reaction was “like a cat tasting wasabi: Get this horror show away from me”. It was, however, “the most contemporary, credible song we’ve sent to the contest in a long time”, he said.
