Last Christmas Sam Ryder treated Oxonians to a surprise performance at the Westgate Centre to showcase his festive hit, You’re Christmas to Me, and this year he’s back, performing at the O2 on Cowley Road on Thursday 12 December. I caught up with him over Zoom to find out what his latest tour is all about, and what the Oxford audience can expect from the show:
“We're going to celebrate the people who sometimes, let's face it, get left off the main touring schedule, so we're going to come and say hello properly. We wanted to finish off the year saying hi to people off the beaten track. When you go and do these shows, you have the most fun ever. It's not about metrics or numbers. It's just about vibe and energy in the room.”
Sounds like you’re looking forward to it.
Yeah, it's going to be cool. This time of year can be polarising. On the surface, everyone's absolutely stoked but people are feeling different things, things come up. Community is so important at this time of year, regardless of if you're feeling buzzing or if you're feeling a bit down.
You’re bringing Christmas?
We are! We've got a Christmas song that we released last year and to be honest, I don't want to be biased, right, but I love that Christmas song. Could sound a little bit sort of big headed, but because it's a Christmas song, I think I have license to like it.
I always wanted to do something that felt like it had the energy of Home Alone 2, when he arrives in New York and Darlene Love’s We're All Alone on Christmas starts playing in the background. It’s got that wall of sound thing going for it, the same as the Ronettes. It’s almost overloading the speaker, like when you hear an old James Brown record and it almost like sounds like the microphone is trying to get away from James, because it's like ‘you're killing me, James’, in the best way. When you hear those old Christmas songs that did that, it's beautiful – I could talk about it all day. That's kind of what we tried to try to achieve with ours.
When did you discover your extraordinary vocal range, and is there anything you can't sing?
Definitely. There are definitely things I can't sing, but I want to try. In pop music, it's interesting because there are amazing singers, but we're hearing super processed vocals all the time. Some of my favourite vocal recordings I've made have just been singing-slash-just absolutely belting it into my phone. It’s all over the place in terms of volume but it's got character. In the studio, we process and flatten things but there are so many schools of thought and practices and disciplines in music. I've got a limited time here, and I just want to try and explore more – including Gregorian charting when the time's right.
I recently was chatting with Alfie Boe who's an incredible vocalist, and we were talking about getting together and him teaching me how to tackle opera, which is a whole different technique and a whole different discipline. I fancy giving it a shot, see if I've got the lungs for it. And I really loved messing about with the enunciation that you need in theatre, as well. For me, I started by singing heavy metal, which is actually incredibly theatrical.
I'm thinking of Freddie Mercury duetting with Monserrat Caballé…
Yeah. We haven't had a moment like that long. I actually spoke with Hannah Waddingham about doing something like that one day, because she can do it all in terms of that vocal sensibility. Hopefully we can get in a studio together and just mess around. She's just a legend.
I’m excited by the thought of the two of your together. Please do a little cover of Barcelona...
Yeah, I truly think it would be sick.
What are you doing for Christmas?
I'm with my granddad, my mum, my dad. Usually, my sister, her husband and their kids join us, but I think they're on rotation (they go and do the other side of the family) so we're in kind of in a fallow year but it will still be absolutely lovely. Boxing Day. I think I'm going to head to Cornwall and maybe try and get a little bit of surfing in and I’ll do some Lego. I'm inundated with LEGO sets, and it's driving my partner crazy. I’ve got Rivendell in a box in the lounge, taking up valuable real estate. I need to finish a Millennium Falcon, so I'm swamped.
I want to try and have a little end of year celebration with all the crew on the project. So we'll either do that on this tour, orwe might to Scotland together and just chill, because next year is going to be a big one, with all the new music coming out.
Sam Ryder (doors at 7pm)
O2 Academy Oxford
190 Cowley Road, Oxford
Tickets and more information from gigantic.com
