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.