Portaferry’s Ryan has hopes on Cupid lifting him to music heights

15 April 2020

PORTAFERRY singer/songwriter Ryan McMullan has just released a new four-track EP.

The up and coming star, who has supported Ed Sheeran and Snow Patrol, is hoping that Ruthless Cupid will satisfy his growing legions of fans while he still works on his much anticipated debut album.

The 29 year-old told the Recorder this week: “This is something that I really wanted to do and get it out. It’s a concept EP where I’ve made Cupid the villain rather than the hero as we all seem to do.

“I didn’t want to wait until the album is ready — that will be ready when it’s ready — so I thought there was no better time than the present.”

The former St Patrick’s Grammar School student, who captained the school’s hurling team, has had a short but meteoric rise to fame since he decided not to pursue a career as a civil engineer.

With the success of his single, Rebellion, and Make A Mark, a collaboration with Irish folk band Beoga, he has toured non-stop, playing to sold-out shows in Dublin and Belfast as well as support slots with The Coronas on their Long Way Home tour. Last year he opened the Acoustic stage at the Glastonbury Festival.

He also opened for Snow Patrol in the US, Europe and Asia and stood in as an honorary member of the band when guitarist Johnny McDaid was recovering after surgery.

The son of Nuala and John McMullan, who still in Portaferry, Ryan started off performing at a young age, singing in a local band, Purple Road, when he was in his mid-teens.

He is now staying at his Belfast home, having made it back from the US last month, just two days before the country closed off its airports.

Many of his concerts have had to be postponed, including two nights at the Portico Theatre in Portaferry, now rescheduled to June 27-28, and his

UK and Ireland tour this month. He had also been due to headline his first festival, Vearsai in Donegal, last weekend.

Ryan’s current single, In A Heartbeat, is on the new EP along with Ruthless Cupid, Some Kind of Perfect and Outcry.

He explained: “These songs reflect a handful of times where it felt like Cupid has been toying with me. Amusing himself by throwing me into situations where I’m either out of my depth, hoping for reconciliation, or unable to escape the truth that even at the

end, I’m still holding on to even the worst of my attempts at love.

“In A Heartbeat was written to sum up a stage I think we all kind of go through sooner or later: the understanding that something that once was, is now no more.

But even at the end knowing it still has a hold on you, so much so, that no matter how toxic it is, or how little sense it made, you’d still run back to it in a desperate attempt to salvage it.”

The new single is already going down well with fans as the video has been viewed over 115,000 times online.

Ryan added: “Everything has been going great for me so far, even without my debut album coming out and that. I don’t think that all these tracks will be on my new album when I feel that it’s ready to be released. It wouldn’t be new music then and I would feel that it would be a disservice to all of the fans who have supported me.

“Regarding the album, I won’t know it’s finished until I listen back to it and feel that all the songs are right for it. But I can tell you that I’m still working away in my wee studio at home.”

Ruthless Cupid, is available now on all major streaming platform such as Spotify, Apple and Amazon.

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