For those of you who missed last Friday night’s episode of The Late Late Show, Bambie Thug was selected to represent Ireland for the Eurovision Song Contest following her entry entitled Doomsday Blue.
Now, I’m sure you are probably asking; who is Bambie Thug?
Bambie Thug is an Irish singer-songwriter from County Cork. Born Bambie Ray Robinson, she grew up in the small town of Macroom and adopted the stage name Bambie Thug upon her into the music scene. Additionally, she began to identify as non-binary, preferring to use the pronouns they/them.
Her selection as the representative of Ireland for the Eurovision Song Contest should hardly be considered surprising, nor ‘shocking’, despite what media outlets such as The Sunday World, or the furor on social media would have you believe. As Fatima Gunning pointed out earlier this month; with a media establishment hell-bent on the representation of minorities across all walks of life, there can be little doubt that Bambie’s selection was based on her perceived identity, rather than her musical talent.
A cursory glance across both social media and other news outlets that have featured Bambie’s selection, highlights the awe in which her idiosyncratic personality and interests are being held, as opposed to her musical abilities.
One can read in the music publication Injection, that Bambie is infatuated with witchcraft, the occult and has carved out her own niche of Ouija pop. RTE report that critics have described ‘the non-binary artist’s music….as electro-rap, confrontational performance art and effervescent, late-night goth pop’. Sonia Evans, the 1993 Eurovision runner up remarked that Bambie Thug will “shock the socks off” of Malmo this coming May. Even Thug’s own chosen stage name appears like a rather feeble attempt to shock the viewer through the childish juxtaposition of the forename, Bambie, and surname, Thug
All of this leaves me with one word; YAWN.
The only thing truly shocking about Bambie Thug and her performance, is how late she is to her own artistic scene.
We have seen every one of these frivolities before.
In the early 20th century W.B. Yeats was obsessed with the occult and regularly practiced seances during his lifetime. Marina Abramovich has been dabbling in witchcraft since the 1960’s and carving pentagrams into her skin during her ‘confrontational’ artistic performances since 1975, most notably with her performance piece entitled ‘Lips of Thomas’.
For heaven’s sake, Janet Farrar crowned herself the ‘Witch Queen of Ireland’’ in 1977.
In terms of appearance, Thug chooses to present on stage in rather gothic attire. But the last time a gothic appearance shocked anybody was following the 1999 Columbine shooting, in which parents incorrectly blamed Marilyn Manson and his Spooky Kids band for inspiring the violence of the shooting that day.
And I am sure at least a few Eurovision aficionados will remember Conchita Wurst, the bearded lady who won Eurovision in 2014 on behalf of Austria.
As you can see, there is nothing shocking about Bambie Thug for anybody who has been around the block at least a couple of times.
Moreover, much like the Girl Band/Gilla Band nonsense, of which I wrote about last year, the promotion of Thug’s non-binary identity, eclectic personality and unconventional appearance seem like a blatant attempt to substitute her mediocre talent for these “shocking” traits.
Well, all I can say is that this writer is not shocked, and won’t be fawning over this Bambie anytime soon.