SuRie

SuRie, born Susanna Cork, is an English pop singer and songwriter who represented the United Kingdom at the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. She entered the world in Essex in 1989 and grew up in Hertfordshire, where her artistic curiosity surfaced early through piano lessons that began at age three and original songwriting that started when she turned twelve. Influences such as Alicia Keys and Billy Joel shaped her initial goal of crafting personal material aimed at a release on the British imprint Bella Union, yet her path led instead to classical training at London’s Royal Academy of Music. There she mastered the oboe while refining her abilities in composition, vocal performance, and writing; concurrently she earned income as a session vocalist and as a pianist in local jazz venues. After completing her studies she joined Belgian indie-pop artist Loïc Nottet as both dancer and backing singer, appearing with him during the 2015 Eurovision performance of “Rhythm Inside” in Vienna. Her own first recordings surfaced the next year: the self-titled EP SuRie emerged in July, followed in September by Out of Universe. Christmas brought her debut album Something Beginning With, a project composed and tracked across twelve months in Australia, Sweden, the United States, and her own British home studio. She later served as musical director for Blanche, Belgium’s 2017 Eurovision contestant, and co-authored the electropop entry “City Lights.” In January 2018 SuRie was named among the hopefuls vying to represent the United Kingdom in Portugal; she prevailed on the BBC program Eurovision: You Decide, outpacing five rivals with the midtempo single “Storm,” whose verses rest on piano while its chorus surges with bright synth lines. The song ultimately placed twenty-fourth among twenty-six finalists.