Ireland: Interview with Brooke Scullion | The Voice UK, Meghan Trainor and her competing at the first Irish national final in years! (Video)

After the announcement of her participation in this year’s Irish national final, at The Late Late Eurovision Special, presented by Ryan Tubridy, Brooke Scullion talks exclusively to EurovisionFun and Andreas Papayiannakis.

Brooke is one of the finalists of the Irish national final for Eurovision 2022, bidding to represent her country with the song “That’s Rich”.

I wrote the song January of 2020, with Izzy Warner and Carl Zane. I hadn’t realised it, but actually Izzy Warner and Carl Zane wrote the song for the Netflix Eurovision movie. Yeah, we didn’t intend on making the song for Eurovision. We basically had 80s in our minds, we wanted to go for an 80s genre but make it modern. So when we created the song, it wasn’t really something that I wanted to let go of immediately. I wanted to give the song the biggest platform that I could. I wanted everyone to hear it. And fall in love with it like I have fallen in love with it. So, we put it forward for Eurovision and now I’m a finalist to be selected for Ireland.

But how did she end up submitting “That’s Rich” to RTÉ and then getting selected as one of the six finalists to compete, in the hopes of representing Ireland at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest?

It was just discussed one day, we had been putting it forward to different labels, we guess there was interest but it didn’t feel right. Then my manager called me and told me they changed the rules this year. Usually Ireland selects their own song behind closed doors, so this is the first time since 2015 that the public will vote. So Ronan, my manager, called me and told me Brooke there are open entries for Eurovision this year. I said “GO GO GO GO for it”! I watched Eurovision ever since I was a baby. So from there, we just let it go and it took a few months for them to contact us back. And when we found out that was the craziest day. i had no idea what I was in for.

Brooke is obviously excited about her competing at this year’s national final for Ireland, The Late Late Eurovision Special:

Yeah it’s pretty intense! I feel like I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself. Which is also not a bad thing because I feel like I took it really really seriously. And the amount of effort we’ve put in and the performance thats gonna come out of this is gonna be pretty cool. So, regardless of the result on Friday the 4th of February, I’m gonna be really proud
of what I put out there. And I hope that the Irish public will be able to see that I’ve put in a lot of effort into this and they’ll put their trust on me to go forward to Turin. 

Her song got leaked by fans, almost half a day before its official release. That’s why she decided, along with her team, to release it a few hours earlier than expected.

So, my song was meant to come out at 00:00 GMT. And someone found out that it came out in New Zealand about 12 hours before the actual release. So, some of the fans leaked it, like what happened wasn’t intentional. Their response was absolutely crazy. People are going mental on Twitter. And it’s so funny for me to watch, because I’ve never had that much of an interest on any of my songs before. Especially for something that I’ve written. I feel like the song connects with so many people because as soon as it comes on, it is immediate. The guitar, the bass hooks you and you nearly just already start thinking “Whats this? That’s familiar but also so different to anything that is out right now!”. So it was crazy that the Eurovision fans are so on the ball. That is so much fun and exciting for me.

Brooke was a contestant at The Voice UK 2020, got placed 3rd and her coach was the global megastar Meghan Trainor. Meghan congratulated her on her social media, by posting a shout-out kind of story, on her Instagram account.

Meghan to me is honestly such a good friend. Like, I haven’t been able to visit her because of, obviously, the pandemic. But she is in contact and she just texted me “I’m so proud of you!” this is unbelievable. It’s so exciting for me. I’ve had a year of just creeping in the background and hiding all my music and people thought that I’ve disappeared. Now I’ve come out and I’m gonna have four songs coming out this year. Meghan has listened to them and approved them. If you met Meghan, you wouldn’t believe that this is a massive popstar. She is so down to earth. Her family are so important to her at what she does, they’re her whole team. Her mummy and her daddy are like her management. It’s really cool what her team is to her and I suppose, if I was gonna emulate anyone’s career, this would be Meghan’s, because she’s a good role model for children. So I really feel she is such a good person to have on your side and I’m really lucky to have her.

She comments that, she would be really proud, if she managed to get selected to represent Ireland this year and feels really confident about her song, that she could somehow turnaround the mishap of Ireland either getting placed low in the scoreboard, or not qualifying to the finals, over the last years:

I feel like Ireland holds a really prestigious amount of honour in the Eurovision history. We hold different records for Johnny Logan winning twice and then writing the song for Linda Martin, obviously there’s so much there. Now, of course in the last few years we haven’t been making it to the final or things just haven’t really gone our way. But I feel like my song could really bring a scent to enter this new exciting conversation and competition. I feel like, if I am selected we have a really good shot of qualifying this year because it’s something that’s not expected from Ireland. Everyone is taken back that this is even an entry. And I feel like it crosses the line between commercial and could-be-in-the-charts and it also hits home and qualifies for Eurovision. I feel like it’s a very strong song, it has potential for the staging, the colours, everything, it would really do well for the country.

With regards to the staging of her song, at the national final of the 4th of February, she hinted us a few things about how her stage performance will feel like:

Of course I do have plans for the staging, but I don’t know, it’s like, okay how do I do this without spoiling too much of the performance. My song is really high energy and very cute. It’s like, I don’t know if I should leak it with you, but we’re going for nearly slumber party vibes, like when you’re with your friends cause that’s when you would listen to the song. It’s such an “I’m over you” kind of song, it’s a breakup song but it’s at the last stage of the breakup, where you’re finally happy and you thank that person for treating you so badly, that it was easy to get over them. So it’s “bye bye fool OH!”. It’s all very cute and coming of age, I would say. But the staging is very high energy and my body is used a lot. So I don’t want that to take a toll on my voice, so I’m doing a lot of training. I’m running on the treadmill while singing it, just a lot of cardio. Trying to get myself ready. And it’s difficult and it’s taking a lot of energy out of me, but Im loving every minute of it because I know what the angle could be.

Her favourite Irish acts at the contest are the Irish duo Jedward (2011, 2012) but also, as they’re both from Derry, Dana (1970). Amongst other countries’ representatives, she loves Alexander Rybak (Norway 2009), Loreen (Sweden 2012) and Lordi (Finland 2006) who, as she mentions, “they scared the life out of her” at the age of seven.

A few moments before the end of the interview, Brooke sang for us a small part of her song acapella.

You can watch the entire exclusive interview with Brooke at the video below:

Listen to “That’s Rich“, Brooke’s song for The Late Late Eurovision Special, at the video below: