Listen to Rosie’s interview with me after she won the competition
Little Rosie Sullivan could not even play a guitar until after New Year.
Now the talented 12-year-old from Barvas on Lewis has won the leading singing and songwriting competition for youngsters in London where she played guitar and sang her own songs.
Rosie performing at the studios in London
She and her dad Mike have just returned from London where Rosie recorded her prize-winning song at the EMI studios and is set to return to the capital for a live performance on June 21.
The Song Academy Young Songwriter competition is for young people, aged seven to 18 across the UK and Ireland. It’s regarded as a springboard for young people to get noticed by key players in the music industry, build confidence, have their voices heard and shine in the limelight.
Rosie only began playing guitar in January
More than 600 entries were received and the judges included singer-songwriter Tom Odell, record producer and musician Shahid Khan, aka Naughty Boy, grammy award-winning songwriter-producers Eg White and Fraser T Smith, and TV and radio presenter Jamie Theakston.
Rosie was the outright winner in the seven to 12 years old category. Aidan Reid, aged 16 from Newbury in Berkshire, won the 13 to 18 category.
Rosie’s song for the competition was Runs From The Storm. She explained how it came about saying: “I was on holiday over near Ullapool and I was looking out of a window. I came up with some chords and grabbed a pen and paper. It was snowing outside and it was howling with wind.
“I put together a sort of story about a boy all alone outside trying to run away from the storm but not succeeding and I compared it to life in a warm house.”
Tom Odell said: “When I was 13 years old I started writing songs, and over the following years I became more and more obsessed with it. But the thing that always kept me awake at night was how to get them out there for people to hear them. This is why I think the Song Academy Young Songwriter competition is a great way to inspire and help through this process and it’s something I wish had been around when I was starting out.”
Rosie said she was not expecting to win and could not stop screaming when she heard she had taken the top prize.
Describing her inspirations, she said she had an aunt who lives in Brighton who is a singer and a songwriter. “I probably get a wee bit of music from her. Newton Faulkner, I really like him and his music, and Jack Johnson. I love Ed Sheeran because he does a lot of guitar stuff and I like his style of singing.
“I’ve been writing songs since I was three. My auntie said my first song was called ‘Dolly on the Road’. It was about sitting in the car with my doll, but apparently I wasn’t old enough to write words so she had to write it down for me. The first proper song I wrote was when I was about nine and that’s also when I started acting. I only started playing the guitar four months ago.”
Rosie is now looking forward to going back down to London for a performance at Westfield in White City on June 21. She said: “Yes, I’m so excited, I’ve only been to London once and lots of my family are going to see me. Most of my relatives live around the Brighton area so they’re going to travel from there and even my gran who lives outside Edinburgh wants to come down.”
well done that was fantastic