In 2020, as the world went into lockdown, Sam Ryder uploaded the first of his now infamous covers. They quickly caught the attention of some famous fans (think Justin Bieber, Sia, Alicia Keys and Elton John) – with compilations of his videos appearing on The Ellen Show, BBC’s Newsbeat and more. As the videos kept coming, so did the fans – with his socials standing at over 10 million followers to date and hundreds of thousands of comments.

Fast forward a year and Sam Ryder stands with 17M social followers and is in the running to be crowned as Tik Tok’s most popular UK artist account for the second year in a row. This would be no mean feat should it happen, especially with Ed Sheeran in full campaign mode and a favourite to take this crown.