Sam Ryder launches Greene King Untapped campaign with secret balcony performance

On a Friday evening at a pub overlooking the Thames, Londoners enjoying a post-work drink find themselves at a secret gig with Eurovision and TikTok star Sam Ryder. Performing on the balcony of the historic Anchor Bankside pub, the Friday night revellers were bopping along to the live music, with dozens of passersby also getting sucked into the live performance. Appointed Greene King’s Head of Gigs, Ryder is launching the brewery and pub chain’s huge new live music campaign, and music talent competition, Greene King Untapped.

Greene King has undertaken this new large-scale live music campaign after studying the fact that two in five Brits, or 40% of the population, had to miss out on live music experiences due to soaring ticket prices, soaring to 64% among 21-24 year olds. There are even reports of live music lovers cutting back on their weekly essentials in order to afford tickets to the shows they can’t bear to miss. It’s unsurprising when ticket prices have somehow hit an average price of £100.

And with pubs and other smaller, grassroots music venues being a vital part of the UK’s music economy, which hit a record £7.6 billion valuation in 2024, the efforts of UK companies such as Greene King to keep that lifeblood flowing have to be welcomed as good news. Especially when smaller music venues are constantly announcing closure, or that they are constantly living under that threat. This represents an existential crisis for the UK’s very special and unique music scene, famous around the world.

On this evening, in which Ryder takes the stage, he is part of a landmark evening, with Greene King Untapped hosting 800 music artists across Greene King pubs around the country. One of the acts is set to win a slot at Pub In The Park 2026, a £10,000 cash prize, as well as a recording session at Metropolis, one of London’s leading studios.

And Greene King has chosen the perfect location for this launching pad on this August Friday night. The Anchor Bankside’s outdoor area is as rammed as can be. There will have been murmurings of a potential big name performing. Ryder had left breadcrumbs in the ensuing hours on Instagram that he would be doing a secret London gig and dropping hints as to where.

Hailing from Essex, Ryder built a huge following online with his TikTok covers before shooting to international fame as the runner-up in the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest. Besides being the UK’s most wildly successful entrant in a very long time, there’s certainly a belief out there that he might have been the overall winner were it not for the invasion of Ukraine that year, which won on the strength of the public vote.

With perfect weather, and his performance dovetailed by some of the indie Greene King Untapped entrants, the scene is set perfectly. And as Ryder’s unmistakable luscious locks and full red beard appear on the balcony stage, the cheer is loud enough to have people nearby wondering if England just scored in a semi-final match they weren’t aware of.

With his trademark beaming smile, Ryder and his full band perform a setlist that is tailored perfectly for the group of fans who were able to figure out where and when he was going to be, as well as the pub-goers and passersby who had no idea this was happening in the first place. That said, it’s easy to imagine that even if someone didn’t particularly like Ryder’s music, it’s just nice to be within his orbit of enormous positivity — he keeps saying “It’s so great to be here, man,” and there’s no doubting he means it from his core.

He opens with Tiny Riot from his debut album There’s Nothing But Space, Man! As well as his vocals, so well-known for huge range, power, and falsetto, the first few numbers also see him shredding out on his guitar — he wasn’t a touring guitarist for nothing, prior to TikTok and Eurovision.

There are new songs, like the recent single The Feeling Never Went Away, exhibiting touches of soul music, as well as OH OK, both of which form a very exciting picture for his upcoming album, Heartland.

He deftly sticks in a cover, and a well-chosen one at that. Mass sing-alongs break out across the Anchor’s pub garden and the adjacent London street as Ryder puts an exceptional personal spin on 4 Non Blondes’ What’s Up? A born showman, he knows exactly when to let the crowd take the lead, who belt the song’s immortal ‘What’s going on?’ refrain loud enough to be heard in all the neighbouring boroughs of the capital. But when he rejoins for the chorus himself, his incredible set of pipes hits the high notes with seeming ease.

With one song to go, Ryder plugs his upcoming Wembley Arena show in November, which makes you stop to appreciate the fact that he’s supporting this live music initiative and doing this comparatively tiny performance on a pub balcony. He has spoken about how he wouldn’t be where he is now without cutting his teeth playing at pubs and tiny venues to tiny groups of people, and why this campaign is personally important to him.

But the final talking point is outer space. His closing song is, of course, Space Man, the song which he says “changed everything for us.” It sounds just as brilliant tonight as it did in 2022 for the Turin Eurovision final, as he effortlessly jumps between tenor and falsetto in its huge chorus. The best news of all is this isn’t even the evening ending on a high — it’s only pm, and Greene King have plenty more live music in store in London and around the country. It will be wonderful to see how the brewery’s new music initiative develops from here, and hopefully, it inspires more live music to spring up around the United Kingdom.