Ireland’s Eurovision entry, Doomsday Blues, a song which is winning significant plaudits from the global Eurovision community, begins and ends with the same lyric, referencing the fictional, killing, “unforgiveable curse” from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books: “Avada Kedavra, I speak to destroy”
The song is about what would once have been called a scorned woman, placing a supernatural hex on the former lover who has abandoned her. The lyrics express a desire for that ex-lover to be as lonely and miserable as the singer, and to know no future lovers or happiness: “That all the pretties in your bed Escape your hands and make you sad And all the things you wish you had you’d lose”.
There’s also a plea for self-destruction: The singer wishes to destroy the part, and parts, of herself that remembers her ex fondly, placing the killing curse on her own memories, both romantic and sexual: “Avada Kedavra, the thoughts in my head The places I touch when lying in bed The visions of you, the words that you said, undo”
In other words, destroy my thoughts, destroy my memories, destroy (presumably) my sexual desire.
In the final verse comes an admission of loneliness and sorrow and self-loathing: In truth, the singer wants her ex back, but doesn’t feel that she’s good enough for him: “For your romance, I’d beg, steal and borrow It’s draining me hollow, you I guess you’d rather have a Star than the moon”
He – the feckless ex – wants the stars, the singer sees herself as a pale reflection of starlight – the moon – and not good enough for his “romance”.
The performance of the song delivered in Malmo on Tuesday night, if you haven’t seen it, is quite something. If the purpose of art is to make you feel things, well, this accomplished that much:
To be honest, I’m not vastly interested in people’s negative reactions to that performance, other than to note that many people will hate it, and I understand why: The song and its overtly and consciously occult and satanic presentation combine, presumably as intended, to almost perfectly trigger alarm bells in people with traditional religious beliefs and social values. I suspect that if it failed to do so, those who staged that performance would be disappointed.
I am much more interested in those who adore the performance, the lyrics, and the staging. Some of that can be explained by the simple fact that Bambie Thug is Irish, and we like to rally around the flag – but the song, as Youtube views and comments would indicate, is drawing interest and acclaim well beyond our borders. I think it’s because it speaks to something real.
It is not a coincidence, I think, that Bambie Thug describes herself as non-binary and performed the second half of her song draped in the transgender colours. Nor is it a coincidence, I think, that said performance includes lyrics wishing for the destruction of the “thoughts in my head” and “the places I touch when lying in bed”. Nor again is it a coincidence, I’d argue, that the song speaks of anger and loneliness and resentment towards an ex-lover and feelings that the singer is just a “moon” compared to the stars in the sky.
It’s ultimately a song about self-loathing and self-hatred, and the destruction of the self. What else does the transgender flag represent, if not the destruction of the old self and the re-making of a person in a new, improved form?
I noted on social media yesterday that the video below amounts to a Rorschach test – that is to say, your perception of it and reaction to it probably predicts a lot about your personality. Here’s Bambie Thug, explaining what makes them special, in their (non-binary pronouns) view. The answer made me feel deeply, deeply sorry for her.
Such a shining light on this tainted competition. #bambiethug pic.twitter.com/2yd7JvFtWF
— Pinku (@pinkurocket) May 7, 2024
It’s a strange answer, I’d argue, precisely because those are, objectively, not the things that make Bambie Thug special. Being a witch is just a label anybody can apply to themselves. Being queer is pretty common. Having the kind of songwriting talent though, that Bambie has, is really rare. She’s unique: There are tens of thousands of witches and queers worldwide, but only one Bambie Thug. There are other deeply laudable things about her too, like this, from Thug’s Wikipedia page:
Robinson has stated an emphasis on trying to be “good role models” with music, stating a belief that many within the industry “glamourise” drug addiction. They stated in an interview with Gay Times that “We need to parade healthy behaviour. It’s important if we are going to be breaking [through] so that younger kids and teens listening to our music, and looking up to us, aren’t fed this negative behaviour.
That sounds more like Dolly Parton or Daniel O’Donnell than Bambie Thug, no?
I think it’s very telling that we live in an age where so many people find resonance in labels that they have chosen to apply to themselves, rather than the objectively good things we can recognise in them. It seems, from this remote vantage point, that being identified as a witch and a queer first is immensely important to Bambie Thug, while being identified as a really talented woman from Cork would be offensive.
That this all resonates with so many people must be connected, I think, with the world we live in: That many women (and indeed, a not insignificant number of men) feel used and abused by a sexual culture that makes them feel disposable victims of ex-lovers who used them and moved on to something better. That many of them are struggling with who they are, feeling that perfectly normal feelings of rejection and loss after a breakup must be destroyed, rather than experienced. After all, it’s only by destroying those feelings of loss that they can safely move on to the next lover, and the next temporary bedmate. That in the end, they’d “beg, steal, and borrow” for “real romance”.
As to the Satanism, and the occult, there’s undoubtedly religion of a kind there: The primary theological difference between worship of the Christian God and worship of the underworld is that only one of those requires that you take responsibility for your actions: Christianity, for better or worse, tells you that eternal happiness is in your own hands if you make certain choices. Satanism by contrast tells you that nothing is your fault, and that your unhappiness is a result of cruel trickery played on you by the world and its creator – “the apple is really tasty but you can’t eat it”.
The devil doesn’t blame you for eating the apple. He encourages it, and tells you that you deserve the apple.
Many of these people, it’s fair to say, have eaten the apple. And while, in the moment, the apple proved tasty and thrilling and sexy, it’s left them feeling hollow rather than full. Angry and lost, rather than happy. Perhaps if some of them were a different gender, then the apple itself might prove tasty. Maybe the apple was really meant for Adam, not Eve. Maybe if the parts of myself that I touch in my bed were destroyed, I’d feel different. It shouldn’t be especially difficult to draw a line between these feelings and the transgender flag covering Bambi’s torso.
I don’t write this, by the way, as a subscriber to the most rigid rules of Christian sexual morality – sex outside of marriage is just entirely normal, ancient, and human. The difficulty is that even rules that seem absurd and old-fashioned on their face often speak to a larger truth: Perhaps marriage in that rule was simply a byword our ancestors used for “genuine affection, connection, mutual respect, and care”. Sex without those things will leave one partner feeling like a used tool, every single time. It was no less an expert on this topic than Stormy Daniels, porn actress extraordinaire, who told a New York Courtroom this week that alleged sex with Donald Trump left her feeling shaken and used. Even the professionals experience this, it seems.
Most young people, though, are not professionals. They’re amateurs, trying to seek empowerment and joy where society has told them to find it. And many of them are instead finding emptiness and the destruction of their own self-worth.
In such circumstances, one might resort to external labels to make oneself feel special again. And one might be filled, indeed, with the kind of anger and rage that can only be expressed in the words Avada Kedavra, I speak to destroy.
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Even outside the religious elements, it is completely anti anything the majority of the country represent. We literally had a ref on these values and most rejected it. The act is an insult to Irish values and culture. We are fighting against this today becoming the norm and they shoved it in our face again. It’s promoting mental illness aside from the the clearly satanic ritual she performs. Her family should be ashamed.
Very true James. This type of nillisitic display forces people to think about where they are going. Some will gravitate towards the darkness and the despair that it brings Most will choose life and positivity. In the past when Christianity was dominant many rebelled against aspects of it but generally went along with the life affirming message. Now you can see another view. A deluded creature screaming in despair. Make your choice people.
Its awful and cal up above raised an excellent point that people who engage in this stuff are basically empty vessels trying to fill a void as they felt they were rejected by society and its very true. When you abandon christianity and the way of life which is fullfilling to the point that is indescribable, you end up obsessed with the physical and thats when degenerative acts come in like this. The eurovision was originally about each countries culture expressed in music and now its about degenerative acts. Anyone that condones someone walking around half naked in pedo colors dressed like satan needs their heads checked. This does not represent us and only proves that the music industry is the beast system. LQBTQ is a maxist degenerative society that is fixated on the physical elements and no emphasis on the soul, its all about perversion of the body and mind.
The many who rebelled against religion were following the bigoted cult of RTÉ, principally led by the matron activist, Marian Finucane, from the late 1970s onwards, with all the other RTÉ moron newcomers being more bigoted than Finucane herself was. For this reason, I do not listen to RTÉ now. Bigotry and corruption is their game. They want to wipe out the Catholic religion and the discipline required to be a Catholic, completely out of Ireland. They promote promiscuity in its place, which is all that’s important to them. Satanism and the occult and transgenderism oppose the Catholic religion. That’s why Bambi Thug is a high status individual with media nobodies. And of course Miss Thug dutifully endorses govt policy which is the promotion of the alphabet cult in schools and the hunting of the Irish out of Ireland, to be replaced with diversity and multiculturalism, imported to breed for us and to wipe the Irish, their culture, history, Christian values and way of life off the face of the earth. Bambi Thug is of great relevance to the agenda of this govt with RTÉ being their mouthpiece.
Something strange is happening with the EBU! Normally Bambie Thug should be a producers choice, to have it as late as possible to stop kids watching it. But Israel is a producers choice! It looks like the Zionists are using the Eurovision vote as a vote for the genocide in Gaza. The EBU are just another media organisation in their control. The whole Producer’s choice makes no other sense! They will say… look how the World supports Israel!!
They are paddy, sure the Euro journalists council is funded by kill gates and the global media council is funded by Soros. This Bambi garbage is just project monarch indoctrination. They have been doing this garbage since the 60s. Slowly normalising sodomy, satanism and depravity. The national anthem that was played in 60s tv in the USA had hidden subliminal messages saying stuff like the government was God and obey the government. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m71fpuLkESA
Grand Finale??? Only 50% of the votes are given for the 4 hours! It is just pretending. All of Europe have to sit there watching a big lie!
The entire Eurovision…at least the clips I saw..was vulgar. Middle aged women, old enough to know better, flaunting their depreciating assets..the bare faced cheek(s) literally, of others .and the deminic, deranged display by Ireland. I fully agree this young person is a talented creative. I just wish this creatiivty was expressed in a more wholesome way. This is meant to be family entertainment
Our demon got the right result… 6th form the jury, 6th from the public and 6th place in the finish… = 666. Does this indicate that there was fixing for this? They love their symbolism!
Wow to much of a coincidence methinks
Folk who don’t identify with their own gender, the very core of their being – must on some level feel self loathing and empty.
Take away religion, gender, the mother/woman, property ownership, freedom of speech, ability to relate to oneself – there isn’t much of a person left.
Bambi is wholly representative of where that generation are going – self loathing
Bambi isn’t on her own. She stands on top of a vast, highly motivated and highly resourced ideology that seeks to destroy Christianity. Her performance will be “nudged” into the feeds of countless young girls as cool and futuristic. She promotes mental illness and is an agent of degeneration. Is she the pinnacle/end point of feminist ideology ?
The collapse gathers momentum.
Interesting analysis, John. Performances like this are now par for the course in the Eurovision, certainly what’s required to be considered a front runner. I remember, while growing up as a teenager in the 80’s and even in the early 90’s, that Eurovision songs tended to be more conventional and normal (I’m not afraid to use that word). But that was before the event became to be considered ‘camp’ and eventually it morphed into the partyground of the LGBT crowd. It’s gone beyond that now, however, and has become all about embracing degeneracy – the more shocking, the better. It seems that those in RTE who are responsible for Ireland’s Eurovision participation have finally copped on to this reality. ‘Progressive’ Ireland was behind the curve on this but we are good at catching up. Expect to see more of the same (or more extreme) Irish performances in the years ahead.
Before I comment, I’d like it known that my pronouns are; ‘this’ & ‘that’ & I identify as a turtle. What it gods name is going on with this competition? I know it’s not really about music anymore, but are we supposed to be entertained this nonsense? Is this considered family entertainment? Unbelievable!
Sorry, how rude of me. Mine are was/were, I’m a has been
😂
At least you were once a ”been” Most people never get that high as they never achieved anything in the first place.
The Eurovision used to be family friendly, and something to make a laugh of. That girl or should I say woman because she’s 31, can sing but the entry is worse than terrible, not even original. If they were honest they would rename it the weirdovision. I haven’t looked at it in years.
You should not say girl, or woman, they are nonbinary. People like you are apparently incapable of showing the barest amounts of respect towards other people.
You can make believe all you want, but I will not be forced to submit to the command of the mentally ill. Despite that the governments are backing this insanity, I will not yield. Line me up against the wall and dump me in the pile. I have no desire to play this game. Be outraged, not my problem.
I’m not a musical snob (having enjoyed “Chirpy, Chirpy, Cheep, Cheep .. Chirp” by Middle of the Road over 50 years ago). Nevertheless could Gript find something more interesting to write about – only a tone deaf, lobotomised chicken would give an ear to the typical musical offerings served up by Eurovision entries these days. And to think a song of the quality of “Volare – cantare ..” could only achieve second place in 1959 – what a drop in standards – and abandonment of the idea of the “well written tune” – the Eurovision has come to represent in recent decades !
A really brilliant post..thank you John..deeply thought out, and even caring.
“The song and its overtly and consciously occult and satanic presentation combine, presumably as intended, to almost perfectly trigger alarm bells in people with traditional religious beliefs and social values”
Without a doubt true, and without a doubt I’m not alone in finding it all just a bit tedious. I’m guessing that Bambie Thug doesn’t realise how much ‘they’ are part of mainstream establishment values and that ‘traditional’ values are fast becoming the counter-culture.
P.S. Glad that John recognised Bambie Thug’s genuine talent here -many of Bambie’s detractors begrudgingly refuse to acknowledge it.
Probably the most balanced analysis I’ve read of this individual. Very thought provoking. Well done.
The possibility of actually winning the Eurovision is the last thing RTE or we the licence-fee payer needs right now.
She could always go on the cabaret circuit….?
It is a aptly named anthem for modern Ireland.
I am just going to ignore them and they will be forgotten about in a few years
Exacty. Who won last year does anyone remember ?.
I have a feeling the powers that be, will not let us forget about Bambie. She (that’s what she looks like to me) will be the up and coming role model of children by design. Very sad.
You don’t get to decide other people’s pronouns. They are nonbinary, they use they/them and you are a disrespectful waste of oxygen.
You say I ‘don’t get to decide other people’s pronouns’ but I do get to honour my truth i.e. what I see before me is what I see before me. If I see a man, I call him a man. If I see a woman, I call him a woman.
Of course, if some men feel like a woman, we can all come up with another pronoun for them . Perhaps we could call him a ‘ze/zer’ or whatever pronoun they choose. But feeling like a woman does not make one a woman. A woman has periods, a womb, ovaries, menopause etc. Female pronouns belong to females. I would be stating an untruth by calling a man a woman. But I’m not denying some men and women do not feel like men and women. So an agreed upon new pronoun could be used for them.
And then nonbinary people can have their pronouns too. Something could be agreed upon.
But male and female pronouns are already taken.
Similarly if I see one person in front of me, I refer to them in the singular. Using plural pronouns is telling a lie. They/them is plural.
Doesn’t anyone think about Marty.
Year after year after year of this stuff?
He gets paid doesn’t he ?. We on the other hand have to pay a license tax to look at this crap.
‘Christianity, for better or worse, tells you that eternal happiness is in your own hands if you make certain choices’
Sorry John, this is not Christianity you are describing, but rather a hollow, empty caricature. Christianity is named afterJesus Christ and what he has done; and therefore is not about what we do / have done.
Satanism, on the other hand, turns our gaze away from Chist so that we are completrly absorbed in ourselves –that is the source of the self-loathing you are talking about. Thr more and deeper we look at ourselves the less we likr what we see. This is preciscely why we are called to focus on Christ instead.
You might be missing his point. He was contrasting the sense of personal accountability in true Christianity versus the self absorbed blame shifting of satanism. Remember faith without works is dead (James 2:26)
I made the mistake of reading her Wipedia entry. Talk about butchering the English language. The article never uses normal grammer but refers to her as they them, makes it almost unreadable. I can sum it up as a mentally deranged drug addict, most likely severely abused as a child, ends up a hollowed out childless and loveless 31 year old wino, destined to die alone and be then eaten by her cats.
There isn’t a Wikipedia entry for a “her” by that name because Bambi uses they/them, please keep crying about how you don’t understand basic grammar. Singular they has been used throughout history, including in Shakespeare, but I guess the concept of respecting other people is too much for your hatred addled brain to handle.
As Paul Weller once said; “I’ve heard more music coming out of Kenny Wheeler’s a*sehole”.
That just about sums up the Eurovision for the past decade.
Stop watching and paying for RTE and the other woke media outlets. You’ll see changes very quickly.
Satan has taken controle of our country this was and is satanism, demons are having a field day.
Transgender indoctrination in our schools and rainbow flags flying high everywhere 🌈.
Abortion being pushed rather than adoption 👹👹👹👹🫣
At least we needn’t worry about winning with this execrable entry and being landed with the production costs for next year.
Small point, to truncate Macbeth, “Is this a dagger which I see...” thrust athwart Bambi’s pubic pouch?
Just askin’
It might win by fraudulent means it suits the WEF agenda and it would be a way of influencing our very young, if Bambie becomes a role model.
The fact that it is an execrable entry makes it very like that it will win given what the Eurovision has now become.
Coz the Ukraine won last year purely on its excellent muzak…?
When I saw the entry on RTE I thought it was tragic, but that was largely down to the sound engineering on the show being crap, combined with Bambi Thug’s vocals swapping from really fantastic when she’s doing screamo, to really subpar when she’s singing melodic lines with laboured vibrato.
Seeing the performance at Malmo, I gotta say I was impressed. She’s a great song writer and the visuals were spectacular. Genuinely a captivating performance, and she is a serious stage presence. Her vocals on the melodic sections do need some work though.
I actually hope the nonbinary thing doesn’t detract from her. Eurovision is famously gay, so it might go down well, but realistically 99% of the voting public will think she’s just making up labels for herself, which is, well, just a bit cringe. A real shame; her performance is so cool, and alternative, and spooky and creative- being perceived as cringe would break the spell.
*them, the cringe thing here is your disrespect
I got thru about 15 seonds of it.
One word.
Ugly.
“Nor again is it a coincidence, I’d argue, that the song speaks of anger and loneliness and resentment towards an ex-lover and feelings that the singer is just a “moon” compared to the stars in the sky.”
I suspect the message of that element of the lyric is that their ex is someone who wants the unobtainable not someone who revolves around them.
Degeneracy like this reminds me of the Albert Pike Letter to Mazzini, (of course it’s fake ….blah blah blah).
“The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the “agentur” of the “Illuminati” between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism(the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other.Meanwhile the other nations, once more divided on this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual and economical exhaustion… We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil.Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view. This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time.”
How privileged does someone have to be to sink into this narcissistic faux-existential-“abyss”?
I can’t believe the independent even referred to it’s preferred pronouns, I will not ever be forced to go along with the disillusions of these sick narcissists, that’s what they are self centred brats never told no as Children, No one will make me change the English language for these sick people. I will go to jail !
Christianity is under attack and it will get worse, the great apostasy as foretold in the bible, it’s one of the signs of Christ’s Return.
Ireland and the west are under attack as they indulge themselves in all sorts of depravity while rejecting Christ. The west is falling.
Make no mistake, the things we’re witnessing today are not coincidence.
Irish people called for separation of Church and state, from oppression etc, You reject God you allow all sorts of depravity into your life, no matter how good we think we are we are sinners in the eyes of God and to reject Jesus Christ is the ultimate unforgivable sin. We are without doubt as corrupt as the days of Noah.
Many people reading this will also be unbelievers and think it’s all nonsense but I would rather live under the influence of the Church than the influence of Satan because anarchy and chaos and everything being turned upside down, all this gender nonsense, everything we see wrong today, the immorality is truly astounding and this is all because people Reject God and see themselves as gods!
Their use of ‘they’ as a version of a personal ‘I’ in their interviews is very powerful and effective. They never go down the rabbit hole of collective nouns and first person plurals. The individual that perhaps could embrace ( but not certainly) more than the self is very much at the core of their artistic vision. They are in the spirit of Eve Sedgwick who said that ‘Queer can only be productively applied to the first person singular’.
Queer’ in the context of Bambie Thug isn’t in the context of sexuality, but rather the ‘queer theory’ definition of the word.
‘Queer’ in this sense is more about the destruction of everything we see as traditional and everything we hold sacred.
Lee Edelmann’s No Future is a major work in this area. In this book, Edelmann makes an argument for how the idea that children are innocent is holding back the progress of the queer movement, and depicts children as the enemy of the queer movement.
The roots of this ‘queer theory’ appears to be found in the original author’s rationalisation of paedophilia.
“Queer theory’ then grew legs and became a broader field of study that can now be studied in all major universities in the West.
Queer theory writing is all extremely verbose and highly intellectual looking, which masks the fact that it is essentially just evil shite talk.
Oh Edelman’s Queer is pure nihilism I totally agree. Nothing queer about it in the slightest. Sedgwick’s queer is far more in the vein of Derrida’s rogue or monstrous arrivent. It is in this context of the roguish future of Queer Theory (paraphrasing Michael O’Rourke) that I see Bambi Thug occupying a place. Essentially, Queer Theory in my desired form, is a theory about an undecidable future to come, what Derrida would term ‘avenir’. ‘No Future’ is antithetical to such a vision.
Although Edelman’s mid nineties work, especially Homographesis, was good.
There’s something so disheartening about finding an artist with such strong character and then finding sad sacks of slop spilling their ignorance on to a page. The author allows clear bias and prejudice to be shown through the work, and if one cannot understand how pronouns work they probably need to go back to year five english rather than polluting the Internet with their filth.
I feel sorry for you. There is so much joy to be found in life, but you spend your precious time being offended and angry at people for not choosing to give you control over their words and actions. Go outside and enjoy nature.