Brooke Scullion smashed onto the scene when she represented Ireland on the Eurovision stage in 2022.
Since then she’s become a guest presenter on Ireland AM, she’s toured internationally and she’s made her native Derry proud.
Joining Doireann Ní Ghlacáin on Tracks & Trails this season, we caught up with her to discuss the importance of getting out with nature and how sharing her diary through her debut novel has helped her release trauma.
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Hi Brooke! You’re in this season of Tracks & Trails, exploring Fermanagh…Talk to us about that!
Fermanagh is beautiful, The Stairway to Heaven is there! We went to the mountains called Cuilcagh Mountains, the Lakelands. I had no idea what Tracks & Trails was going into it. I didn’t know what would be expected of me. I didn’t know what part of my mind would I access or what would I talk about. Like I actually didn’t know if I would lead an interview or if I was being interviewed. And it was such a beautiful experience, because Doireann Ní Ghlacáin, I’d never met her before, but we had the most amazing chats. What I found throughout my life is that nature and walking create such a space for like conversation and like really intellectual conversations. Me and my best friends would walk and chat about the maddest things and I think it just opens up that like different conversations that you wouldn’t normally be having.
It is so beautiful to get out in nature!
If I’m never overwhelmed with work or do not know what I’m doing. Me and my mum, or me and my dad would go out on walks, there’s like an eight-kilometre loop around my house and I don’t know how many times I’ve done it, countless. It’s the only walk that I never get sick of, if that makes sense. It’s my home, it’s my home routine and it has created a lot of solutions for me and calmed me down in different situations and I think it’s incredible. We live in such an amazing part of the world to not see how many walks and beautiful landscapes that there are as a sense.
It’s Eurovision week as well. How has your life changed since you competed in 2022?
It actually changed everything for me because if I hadn’t got through that national final and been selected, I hadn’t a clue what I was going to do. Eurovision gave me a fan base first and foremost and kind of let me respect myself a bit. I’d done The Voice before but that was singing other people’s songs. So this was the first time I ever got to sing my own song and create a performance purely on my own brand. It was just the most freeing thing. It gave me so much confidence, I toured Australia, people still write to me about it. It’s just I had an incredible experience. Eurovision, the fans, they love you, they take you under a wing and that’s you for life. But obviously, it doesn’t go like that for everybody.
What was it like representing Ireland on an international level like that?
I think everybody, no matter what capacity, wants to do something for the country or represent it in some way. For me, that was the most incredible thing. That will just always be the most incredible thing I’ll ever do. In terms of the country getting behind you, there was such an excitement, and everyone was buzzed because they thought I was going to qualify, and I thought I was going to qualify as well. Do you know what, it maybe did more for me not qualifying because people love injustice. And it was such an amazing- like I gave myself 30 minutes to cry and then I was like, hang on a second can I actually watch it back? Because as long as I was proud of it, I didn’t care what the result was.
Irish people love misery!
Yeah, so true and then I put a wee crying video out and that was great too!
As well as singing, you are also a guest presenter on Ireland AM. How has that been?
I love the live aspect of anything, I love that art is created in that moment and things are created in the moment and there’s no hiding places. It has definitely matured me and made me grow up and learn more about people and experiences. And just how to really focus on somebody as well and get the best out of somebody because I love people I always have. I would chat for Ireland if I could. Well, actually I guess I do. I actually just really love getting to know people and I’m genuinely interested when I’m talking to people. I feel like that’s important for them to feel like they’re being listened to. But it’s been the hardest thing actually. It’s the first time I’ve seen so much online critique. It’s been such a smooth road so far, but then you just have to realise that you yourself- you internalise nearly the bad comments and that was kind of hard at the start, but you just have to be yourself and that’s just life.
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It is hard to ignore the online negativity…
Everyone thinks this and in reality, nobody thinks that. If anyone’s ever saying anything negative ever it’s usually because they’re holding the mirror up, you know.
Was presenting always a goal for you? Or did you fall into it naturally?
It happened just extremely naturally. I remember going in for my screen test and they were like there’s no job going and I was like, “Oh I don’t want a job”. Then I ended up doing it! It’s fun for me, I really enjoy it and I can’t believe I’m so lucky and fortunate to be doing it. I love Elaine and I love the people that work there. It’s like the healthiest work environment ever and everybody just wants to see me do well. It’s like being friends with everyone you work with, and I’ve been writing an album now for three years and I’m going to be finished with it this month and then we’ll work out what to do with it. It’s country pop.
Tell us about writing an album, how does that work for you?
Oh God, writing an album is actually really hard. It’s like a body of work and especially your first body of work, I feel like people will be hyper-focused on it, and you know, analysing you. It’s like a deep dive into your diary. It actually was my diary and it was literally ripped apart to create this universe. I’m now not in that space anymore but whenever I release that, it will become something else for someone else and then that’s the beauty of it. It’s like things I write songs about, the problem isn’t there anymore.
Wow! Your actual diary, you must be nervous to release it.
It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to release, yeah. Because everything that I’ve released so far has been really fun. There’s a lot of emotion and trauma in these songs and I think you can hear that because they’re recorded chronologically so like as soon as everything happens, the song is written.
Was being a singer always the plan, Brooke?
No, absolutely not, you know the funny thing about growing up in Ireland, is that people are like Christ’s sake she’s singing again. Like shut up. My family, they’re like the best in the world, but I only had a repertoire of three songs as I was growing up. ’m sure they were sick of it and my brother would leave the room and I was like ach this is just something I enjoy, it’s never going to be a feasible working opportunity. So, I did a drama degree, and it was in the middle of that my friend took me into The Voice and that was the first time. I think it does unfortunately, in this country, take external validation to be like, you’re good at anything.
Growing up, did in ever think this would be your career?
Never, never, never. I think I always wanted to be doing something like this. I was chatting about this the other day, a kid starts to have realisations that they can’t be an astronaut or like it’s very hard, you know like they don’t know many astronauts. It’s not something that’s in their vision. I imagine they don’t know many princesses. They start to self-depreciate their values and possibilities as they get older. I’ve been so fortunate in my past that people have been very good to me and I think it’s so important to be good to people because I’ve crossed the worst so many times meeting people, even the girl who auditioned me for The Voice now works for Virgin Media. She moved from ITV, and now she works in Virgin. And I was like ‘Do you mind me coming into that room?’ and she was like “Yeah” and I was like ‘Am I any different?’ and she was like “No”. I argued with her that I didn’t want to sing, It was so funny!
Did you ever worry about what other people think of you?
I actually never had that thank God. I never had that worry because I was always harder on myself than other people would’ve been. I was never ever worried about what somebody else thinks. Even now I would never have an issue with that, and I don’t know where that comes from. It is an issue that everyone I know has a problem with. I’m not saying I have no issues! But I think life’s too short to be worrying about how someone else would live yours so I’m so focused on what I want, it just comes with learning about who you are and what you want and as long as you are happy with your decision then there should be no other contributing factor. It is actually a skill to learn, to learn it is important to give yourself that grace.
Just before we let you go, what advice would you give your younger self?
My younger self, she’s probably the same person I am now. I actually feel like I’m getting more like her as I grow older. I think I went through so many different phases in school and stuff and conforming to different things. It’s not being as weird as I actually was on the inside. Being weird now is probably the most attractive thing in the world and I don’t think anyone can be weird enough. So I would just be like, embrace the weirdness, because it’s actually one of the best things about people in the world. A lot of people who were normal per se in school really struggle with that now because they probably didn’t do a lot of things they wanted to when they were younger and I just think embrace the weirdness.
Tracks & Trails airs on RTÉ One on Friday at 8pm
