Bambie Thug: ‘I fully support anyone boycotting Eurovision’

It’s perhaps depressingly appropriate that the artist representing Ireland at this year’s Eurovision is homeless. Bambie Thug, who will perform Doomsday Blue in the first semi-final of the song contest next week, has, since triumphing in the Eurosong selection process in January, been riding high with rehearsals and press and pre-Eurovision parties across Europe. But this star on a roll, while not having to endure the indignity and discomfort of sleeping rough, is couch-surfing.

“I’m waiting for somebody to sign me into a deal, so that I can afford somewhere to live,” the singer-songwriter says. “The first thing for me to do is find a room as soon as I can afford one. I’m staying with my stylist at the moment, or I sometimes stay with my witch mom” – a friend named Julie – “or I go home and annoy my sister and stay in her bed in Cork.”

Bambie, who grew up in Macroom with three sisters, moved to London 11 years ago, but it’s too expensive to live in the city right now. “My stuff is in storage. I’m moving around a lot at the moment anyway. I don’t know where I’m going to end up. London is definitely my home in certain ways ... My stylist [Beau Tiger Rae] told me I’m not allowed to leave yet anyway. I’ve got stuff to do here.”

[ Eurovision 2024: Can Ireland’s entry Bambie Thug win, who are the favourites and more ]

We have met once before, briefly, before Eurosong, during a speed-dating-style publicity event that RTÉ held with contestants in the Late Late Show studio. The artist’s fierce costume, with its antlers, white-goth face and talons, contrasted with the tiny, quietly spoken person beneath it: Bambie Thug may look like a 15-year-old slip of a thing but is actually 31. On stage the lion came out to match the aesthetic, and blew away the rest of the contestants.

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Now, shortly before the competition, in Malmö, Bambie is in London, chatting via video link. “Rehearsals have always been in London because we don’t really have the resources in Ireland for what we need, and also my whole team is over here. My choreographer, Matt [Williams], works full time as a personal trainer here, so I have to navigate around him because, sure, I can be wherever. We have a space here to rehearse properly, and my director [Sergio Jaén] – he’s Spanish – is here. The costume is actually up in Manchester, but it is by an Irish designer, called [Mariusz] Malon. It’s incredible.”

Bambie Thug’s sound is a musical mash-up – “hyperpunk avant electropop”, or “Ouija pop” – forged after growing up with music that ranged from rap, rock and jazz to musicals and Westlife. Doomsday Blue is a tale of heartbreak, deception and unrequited love but also of ferocious anger at an ex.

Since Eurosong its dark, witchy aesthetic has been tweaked, including for an “intimate” version that Bambie performed on The Late Late Show, in a flowing gown, at a flower-strewn grand piano. “I’ve done that with a few of my songs. I like to see whether they work in alternative genres, because I feel if a song is good, and the melody and the lyrics are, they lend themselves sometimes to a more jazzy or crooner or ballad version. I like to showcase different facets of myself.”

The official video for Doomsday Blue is an amazing concoction, a zippy narrative involving a “note to self” to place a hex on the ex and conjure up a “better new boyfriend”. Originally the story for the video was very dark, but after the Eurosong competition people said their children loved the song, “so I wanted to make sure the video was enjoyable and accessible for people of all ages. My sister and I came up with this idea of making it a little more cutesy, spooky and comedic. There’s a lot of odes to pop-culture moments in there, from Mean Girls and Barbie to [Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco] The Creation of Adam.”

For the stage act in Eurovision “we’ve kept the candles from the music video, so it’s still magical. It’s a much more mature performance. The video goes through different worlds. I can’t do that costumewise, but I’m definitely bringing a reimagined version of the song and performance to that stage. I usually change my tracks for live shows, to add drama, intensity at certain points, to highlight certain moves. So there’s some strings added and weird little sounds here and there.”

Bambie Thug adds that the performance will include doing “a bit of contemporary dancing, ballet” – which is no surprise from an artist who studied ballet at the Urdang academy, in London, before broadening to musical theatre after an injury. Reports from last weekend’s first stage rehearsals in Malmö suggest that Doomsday Blue starts inside a circle of candles, with Bambie in a tutu and shoulder horns, face white, hair styled into antlers. The final section involves the candle circle rising, with a graphic “Crown the Witch” backdrop.

Today Bambie Thug is wearing a black diablo top “by my friend Rose. Her company is called Fake News.” We have a tattoo tour: “I have loads. This whole arm is basically my friends practising on me. Some of them are actually tattooists. If anyone wants to practise I kind of just offer this arm up. I did my hand in the first lockdown, because I didn’t know whether we would come out back into the world, and I had nothing to do and I found this tattoo thing.”

One tattoo is of barbed wire; another is “for the Steamship, the place I lived [in London]. I have Egregore here, the song I wrote with my friend Cassyette. I have a UFO on my scar from where I broke my arm. That one’s me; it’s like a girl kinda-like person with long hair.”

The war between Israel and Hamas, particularly the way it has affected Gaza, has cast a long shadow over this year’s Eurovision. Institutions with the power to respond to widespread concern about Israel’s participation in the contest have avoided responsibility, and pressure has moved to the performers; 400-plus Irish artists signed a statement calling on Bambie Thug to boycott Eurovision, calling it artwashing.

[ Eurovision boycott: We cannot participate in an event that lets Israel ‘artwash’ its crimes ]

Israel is also “still part of the Euros and the Olympics”, the singer observes. “My stance remains clear. I’m pro-Palestine through and through. I don’t think you can not be as an Irish person. And it’s heavy. But, again, me leaving the competition would not change them [Israel] being in it.” It would just mean “there would be one less pro-Palestinian voice, and one step closer to them winning, and one less act to worry about. It’s devastating what’s happening in the world. I am so proud of Ireland in its push against it. And I fully also support anyone boycotting Eurovision. I’m not going to ask them to watch because I’m in it. Boycott it. I would be turning off the channel at that particular time.”

Is it fair to pressurise Bambie Thug to boycott Eurovision?

Listen | 24:08

You might wonder about the logic of this, although no more than you might about the angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin logic of the European Broadcasting Union, the contest’s organiser, which banned Russia from participating in 2022, after its invasion of Ukraine. The organisation says Eurovision is nonpolitical, but who is it codding? When the results come in, it’s the countries that get the points, not the songs or the artists, and voting for, or against, the neighbours is a thing.

Will performers make a stand onstage? Is Bambie planning something? “I cannot divulge anything. What I will say is there’s a group of nine of us who have signed a statement and will continue to be in support throughout.” The statement, which was also signed by contestants from the UK, Finland, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Switzerland, Denmark and Lithuania, calls for “peace, an immediate and lasting ceasefire, and the safe return of all hostages”.

“A lot of the countries are not necessarily allowed to even sign things like we [did],” Bambie says. Were some performers prevented from signing? There’s a long pause. “I can’t say.”

It’s a rotten position for an individual artist. The singer Steve Wall told RTÉ that “it is unfair to put that pressure on Bambie Thug. I think Ireland needs to make the decision. RTÉ needs to make the decision. Israel should not be allowed in the competition. The hypocrisy [of banning Russia in 2022] is just outrageous. It shouldn’t be put on poor Bambie Thug’s shoulders to make this decision. It should be coming from the EBU.”

This year Bambie has talked about sexual assault and trauma, posting in January that “I’ve had complex PTSD from numerous SA [sexual assaults] and childhood trauma but this year it was all reawakened in May [2023] when I was raped by someone I called a friend.” It was 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.”

After eight months on a waiting list, the artist says when we talk, “I’ve started therapy. I had my fourth therapy today. I’m doing EMDR, which is eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing. It’s for childhood trauma and more recent – all; a combination. My therapist is lovely. It’s intense sometimes. I’m only in the beginning of it. Witchcraft helped me a lot before I got to therapy.”

Witchcraft helped with trauma, Bambie Thug says, by “positive reinforcement and making potions with intentions to untangle my brain when I didn’t know how to untangle it. I got into that as a kid. I was out in the sticks, and I had nothing to do!”

Bambie’s duality is striking: in the person, in the stage persona, in the gender identity, in the song Doomsday Blue. Strong, loud and raucous versus soft, delicate and sweet. A mix of assertiveness and vulnerability. Bambie Thug is “my warrior alter ego”. “Bambie” is partially a Disney thing. “I am a massive Disney freak, or I was growing up. The deer Bambi was like a princess deer, but it’s a prince. So that kind of makes a bit of sense for me. Bambie is just a very sweet name. It always makes people smile when I tell them that name, and I love that. I love the name Bambie.”

On the other hand, “Thug is the juxtaposition with Bambie. Because one is sweet and one is tough. But my music is like that. My lyrics might come across that I’m sassy or hard or whatever, but I’m actually quite soft. It’s more in my lyrics. It’s like a shield almost, like an armour that helps me perform and embody, maybe, a stronger version of myself, a more fearless part of me.”

There was a long period where I was very triggered by she/her pronouns for me. I think the gender journey is always in flux. I don’t want to be confined by any rules or roles. I’m free!

Bambie Thug is a stage name; Bambie Ray Robinson is now the real-life name. “Bambie is the name I gave myself,” the artist says about adopting a nonbinary identity and abandoning the birth name they don’t want to share. “I would advise you not to ask nonbinary or queer people their dead names, because it’s quite triggering.”

Nonbinary is a term used by people who identify outside the genders of male and female. “I would say that I do not fit into any of the roles of either gender or what society deems me to be,” the artist says. “Do I feel like either of those roles? Some days more than others; some days not at all. Personally, I just feel like Bambie. There was a long period where I was very triggered by she/her pronouns for me. I think the gender journey is always in flux. It is a journey and, really, is about an inner feeling rather than how you’re presenting in the world. I don’t want to be confined by any rules or roles. I’m free! For me it means personal freedom.”

Bambie Thug talks about assault and trauma. “Had I never been traumatised, and stayed in Macroom and been stuck in a box of what people wanted me to be, probably I wouldn’t have been able to find myself. But that’s not how life happened. And I’m so glad I ended up finding myself and figuring out who I am and allowing myself to be unashamedly proud of that. If I’d stayed in conformity, not left, never discovered, never went to explore myself, then I might not have gotten here as quickly, to myself.”

Bambie Thug also uses the name Cuntry Ray Robinson, which might seem a bit of a juvenile joke, but it’s “another alternate persona for when I eventually do some country music”. The Ouija-pop artist loves country too. “I lived in a pub with 12 people during lockdown, an old pub in London” – the Steamship. “We spent the whole time writing cowboy music and loved it.” They were “my Bohemia days, definitely. Lockdown. Nothing was happening. But for us it was enjoyable because there were 12 of us. There was drama. There were people falling in love with each other, us creating and teaching each other all our skills, because everyone who lived there, and still lives there, are creatives in different fields.”

The Steamship, which opened as a pub in 1805, is now “like a guardianship. It used to be a punk bar, back in the 1970s.” It sounds a fantastic lockdown adventure. “It was great. You know what, I came out when I was living there. I found Bambie Thug when I was living there. I came into myself, really, when I was living there. I hadn’t really had many trans or queer people in my close circle until then, and it allowed me to discover myself and actually feel okay with coming out with myself. It was amazing. I love it. It’s still one of my homes. I don’t live there. But I’m always welcome there.”

Bambie Thug represents Ireland in the first semi-final of Eurovision Song Contest 2024, which will be shown on RTÉ One at 8pm on Tuesday, May 7th. The second semi-final is on Thursday and the final on Saturday