It’s time to take our legacy back home
Eurovision hopeful Bambie Thug says they can definitely deliver with a unique performance and stage show
EUROVISION hopeful Bambie Thug said it is ‘about time we took our legacy back’ at the famed song contest. Ireland has had a tough run at the Eurovision in recent times, qualifying from the semi-finals just once in the last 10 years – when Ryan O’Shaughnessy finished 16th in 2018 with Together.
Last year, Wild Youth limped out at the semifinal stage while Loreen stormed to her second Eurovision crown and Sweden’s seventh – equalling our record.
But Bambie Thug, from Macroom, Co. Cork, who was announced this week as one of six hopefuls, said we ‘just haven’t been sending the right music’.
The singer and songwriter, who identifies as non-binary and uses they/ them/their pronouns, said we ‘should send something that shakes up the competition – not just Ireland’s competition, but the whole Eurovision competition’.
Indeed, their genre-shifting submission to the Late Late Eurosong on Friday week, Doomsday Blue, is unlike anything Ireland has entered before.
The rising artist, who has already gained a considerable following online amassing more than 60 million streams and has received BBC airplay in the UK, said we ‘need to be pushing boundaries’ in the contest to keep up with the pack.
Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday from their mother’s home in Cork Bambie said: ‘We need to be shaking things up. We need to be showing that we’re not just bands or ballads. Of course they have their place, but that’s not what usually wins at the Eurovision nowadays.’
Bambie agreed their identifying as queer could work to Ireland’s advantage at the Eurovision – which has gradually become a de facto celebration of LGBTQIA+ identity in the decades since Eimear Quinn
won with The Voice in 1996. Bambie Thug, who studied musical theatre dance in London, where they’ve lived for the last 11 years, added: ‘I do represent a massive amount of the country that’s underrepresented. And [the Eurovision] is very queer heavy, especially anything theatrical or in that camp.’
‘I just think that we have a lot more to give really and I think that Eurovision is now more than a song contest – it’s also the performance and the
stage show. And that is my cup of tea – that’s what my degree is in. It makes sense.’
Refraining from singling anyone out for criticism, the 30-year-old said their Eurovision memories are ‘mostly the embarrassing ones, to be honest’.
They added: ‘It was embarrassing for us to send Dustin but it was hilarious at the same time.
‘Actually it feels very full circle for me to be performing on the Late Late, because the first time I was in RTÉ I was 12, on Dustin’s Daily News Star Search. I was singing the Hercules soundtrack’s I Won’t Say (I’m In Love).’
Bambie Thug opened up about less happy memories earlier this week, describing a ‘motif of abuse that’s run through my life since I was a child’.
They said 2023 had ‘reawakened’ complex PTSD and trauma from previous sexual assaults after they were ‘raped by someone I called a friend’ last summer. Posting on Instagram,
Bambie wrote: ‘It happened three weeks before my debut Download Festival performance, the biggest moment in my career so far and honestly it stole the experience from me. I was completely dissociated, masking and don’t remember a second of the show.
‘It happens to a lot of people – more people than you know.
‘It’s nothing to do with my art or anything, but I am completely behind any victim of sexual assault and what I will say about it is that it doesn’t define me at all. It was terrible
but I won’t let it stop me. It only makes me stronger. What’s sad about it is the amount of people who have reached out with
We’ve a lot more to give. Eurovision is a lot more than a song contest
something similar. I would hope I can be a voice that people feel like they can [direct message] me on things, because it helps.’
Out of the hundreds of songs that were sent in, six have been selected by RTÉ to compete in its national final.
Bambie goes up against Ailsha, Erica Cody, Isabella Kearney, JyellowL and
Next In Line on the Late Late Eurosong show on January 26, all competing to represent Ireland in Malmo in May.