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Bambie Thug: “I’m trying to help people accept themselves, and be less afraid to be authentic”
Spooky season is upon us! And there’s no-one better to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve than Europe’s favourite witch, Bambie Thug. We meet the occult-loving enigma ahead of their mammoth homeland shows in Ireland to discover the history of their shapeshifting sound, the importance of being authentic, and why magic might actually be all around us…
- Words:
- Emma Wilkes
- Photography:
- Daniel Mutton
- Hair and make-up:
- Kelton Ching and Mel Yoshida
- Outfit design:
- Beril Oktem
- Styling:
- Beau Tiger Rae
- Tour photography:
- Ryder Zamudio
- Tour make-up:
- Ophelia Liu
The first thing you notice walking into Signature Brew in East London is the smell of burning. Is there a séance going on? It’s easy to think so when we find Bambie Thug sat at a table surrounded by no fewer than 12 glowing candles.
As it happens, Bambie is also reading a protection spell. Even the ominous rumble of the trains passing over the railway arch that houses the bar and venue feels spooky. With a single flash of the camera, however, you’re reminded that this is not a séance, but a photoshoot for the Bambie Thug x Kerrang! capsule collection.
For Bambie, Halloween is like Christmas. After changing swiftly into a comfier sweatshirt once the shoot is finished, they perch on a chair with their feet tucked underneath, where it becomes clear that, on a number of levels, Halloween is their time.
“It’s finally acceptable to be goth for a month without anyone saying to you, ‘Oh, is it Halloween?’” they joke. “It’s a magical time. I love the leaves changing, I love dressing up, I love the turnips.”
Turnips?
“That’s the Irish thing, but it’s really hard to do,” Bambie replies. “They carved turnips back in Ireland at the start. Halloween’s from Ireland, you know? The Americans just took it away. In Ireland, people take it really seriously and everyone just goes mad for Halloween. But something in October has a different energy; I guess it’s the shift from warm to winter. The taxi driver that brought us over was telling us that his daughter was born on Halloween. I was fuming, I was so jealous!”
A few Halloweens ago, Bambie performed in this very room alongside WARGASM and frequent creative collaborator Cassyette. Nowadays, this space would be far too small for them. After years of graft under numerous projects and various genre changes, 2024 was the year everything started moving faster. Bambie ended up on millions of TVs across Europe representing Ireland at Eurovision, placing sixth and earning their home country its best result in almost a quarter of a century. They vaulted up the Download line-up, from a fourth stage slot last year to a triumphant main stage display this summer that veered from sexy to silly to suddenly moving, thanks to a lump-in-throat cover of The Cranberries’ Zombie that spoke to the injustices of a war-torn, hateful world beyond the festival walls. They’re catching up with us on an unusually balmy October day on a break in their tour, which saw them headline London’s 1,700-capacity Heaven and will take them to Dublin this week for an outrageous Halloween blowout.
So, Bambie, have you had any time to sleep, at all?
“No!” they say with a laugh. “It’s been crazy. So many wild things are happening, all really beautiful things. It’s just gone so fast before my eyes, like a flash haze.”
Now their dreams have have been brought from their imagination to reality, there’s something vindicating about the way 2024 has played out thus far. “For the first four years of Bambie Thug, we were throwing music [out there] and nobody wanted to listen to anything.”
Eurovision was, of course, a pivotal moment. They quickly emerged as a frontrunner with Doomsday Blue, which theatrically sewed together disparate genres like the body parts of Frankenstein’s monster in a mercurial, empowering anthem for the underestimated outsider. The usual synthy, fluffy Europop fare this was not – it was dark, it was powerful, and it was refreshingly different, featuring Bambie dancing with a man, ripping off their dress to reveal a leotard the colours of the transgender pride flag, before screaming as they hexed him and left him convulsing on the ground.
Crucially, it was also a moment that made scores of people feel seen, whether they were watching as a queer or non-binary person searching for wide-screen representation (Bambie was also the first non-binary artist to qualify for the show) or were simply happy to see someone from the alt. world storm the competition.
For some artists, Eurovision is a defining moment. For others, it’s just a footnote in their career. Look at Måneskin, now selling out arenas all over the world.
“It’s part of my story, but it’s not the entirety of my story,” Bambie agrees. “It was an amazing platform to showcase my alternative world, and I’m really grateful for it. I’m even more grateful for the [ability to] get into people’s homes and people’s minds that would have never heard of me otherwise.”
And they're not stopping yet.
Bambie Thug always knew there was a witch inside them. “I’ve always been into dark [stuff] aesthetically, and I don’t know why. It’s probably from my Irish roots, to be honest,” they consider. “It’s deep seated in me.”
It didn’t crawl out of them immediately. Born and raised in rural County Macroom, one of their earliest musical memories was of pestering their mum to play a cassette of S Club 7’s Reach For The Stars over and over while on holiday in France, because the car had a tape deck and nothing else. At one point, they were obsessed with Britney Spears and the Spice Girls. Beyond that, they were exposed to a bit of everything – Led Zeppelin, Green Day, Eminem, Joni Mitchell, jazz, classical. The seeds of their no-genres-barred ‘ouija pop’ sound was unknowingly being planted already.
They had the creative fire for it from a young age, too. “Me and my sisters used to rewrite musicals and write our own songs. I just loved performing. I loved writing, I loved dancing,” they remember. “I always knew that I wanted to be onstage, whatever form that was in.”
They went on to study musical theatre but eventually realised it wasn’t what they wanted to pursue. “It takes so long to go up the ranks,” Bambie says, flashing the impish grin that so often emerges when they seem especially delighted by something. “And I wanted to be the star of the show.”
“I always knew that I wanted to be onstage, whatever form that was in”
However, they didn’t immediately end up centre stage. They spent three years writing music for dance artists under a different name before being nudged towards a bubblegum pop project. Meeting eventual creative collaborator Tylr Rydr, however, opened the door for them to start creating something that better reflected who they were. “He was like, ‘This bubblegum stuff isn’t you,’ and I was like, ‘Nah, it’s not me!’ So then he said, ‘Let’s make your witchy stuff.’”
And who was to say they had to contort and diminish themselves into one singular, easy categorised sound? “It’s always going to be alternative because I look like this” – they gesture to their all-black outfit and theatrical make-up – “but I don’t ever want to pigeonhole myself. I love all types of music. I want it all.”
Songwriting also served Bambie a deeper, more personal purpose.
“I had a lot that I needed to uncover in my own brain and songwriting has always given me that, whether it’s just getting through awful things, or getting over break-ups or navigating my own mind.”
What unlocked their authentic artist self, however, was coming out as non-binary.
“When you step into yourself and you’re honest with yourself, I think everything falls into place, and that’s kind of what happens,” they say quietly, hugging their legs closer. “I was existing as what I thought I was supposed to instead of what I am. Bambie Thug is like my shield, it’s armour. It’s the strongest version of me.”
Somehow, Bambie enlisted seven German men to cut their hair off and dye it black. The product of this bizarre event was that they looked in the mirror and finally thought: this is me. Then, in lockdown when they had time to kill, they started playing around with witchcraft. They’d dabbled with it a little before, but then they went to Catholic school, where any dealings with anything vaguely occultish was deeply frowned upon.
“It’s the art of play,” Bambie enthuses. “I love the fantastical elements, the spiritual elements, aesthetically, musically. It’s like finding a pair of jeans and thinking, ‘These are my favourites.’ I was finally stepping into what I was most comfortable.”
In a time where witchcraft has crept into the zeitgeist, now was almost the perfect moment for Bambie to break through. Left with little to have any faith in during the current climate, scores of people have found comfort, guidance and answers in astrology, paganism, and magic – there’s even a corner of TikTok devoted to it, lovably known as WitchTok.
When Kerrang! points out that it’s led to girls going viral attempting to hex their ex-boyfriends, Bambie says that it’s not quite their own style, even though their songs speak of casting them sometimes. There might be elements of revenge fantasy in the likes of Doomsday Blue and the more recent single Hex So Heavy, but fantasies they remain.
“We never do hexes!” they point out. “The first rule is that everything comes back to you. So, only good magic! Even in normal life, if someone’s crossed me, I’ll just make a song. In normal life, I’m quite calm. I don’t really get – or maybe I don’t know how to get – angry properly. But in music, it’s really an outlet for that, then it’s out of me.”
“The first rule is that everything comes back to you. So, only good magic!”
This method of catharsis also aligns with their spiritual compass.
“If you’re angry at someone, you’re meant to just send love and kindness and ask for it back. I do find that actually does clear the air, even subliminally. Thank God for music, to be honest, because otherwise I’d be blocking up a lot. It builds up in your body, you know?”
To get to where they have, maybe they’ve encountered some magic along the way. Other people might call this manifesting.
“It’s working with quantum in your head,” Bambie explains. “If you really want to do something, or you want something to happen in your life, it comes from your head. It starts as a thought. Everything does, even the chairs. Everything we have in this world started from someone’s head. That’s literally magic. A lot of the amazing things that have happened this year, I’ve thought about them, I wanted them and now they’re here.”
When they speak about their belief system with such conviction, the possibility of real life magic suddenly feels plausible. Maybe there’s even something mystic about the origin story of Bambie’s new song Fangtasy, particularly when they say it was “rebirthed” to them.
Not so long ago, Bambie found the track buried at the bottom of a folder on their computer. Until they trawled it back up, they’d forgotten all about it. Now, they’ve got in their discography a Halloween song that can also be played all year round – which might have been the song’s title, had management not given it the thumbs down. It’s even got a dance; part-Thriller, part-Monster Mash, part-Time Warp, which Bambie has been teaching crowds while out on tour.
“When I first started working with Tylr Rydr, we made so much music, even two songs a day,” Bambie recalls. “During one of the lockdowns, I lived with him at his nanna’s house. We were going through a folder of demos all those years back and we opened it and were like, ‘When did we make this?’ It was Halloween three years ago. We reworked it, added the middle-eight, just brought it back to life.
“I can tell who it’s about because of the lyrics and where I was three years ago in my head. It’s kind of a song about not really putting up with shit, dancing to your own beat and being like, ‘No, I’m not gonna do what you want me to!’ It just has such a nostalgic feel to it and I was listening to it thinking, ‘This sounds like what would be played If the Back To The Future prom was a Halloween ball.”
With an all-you-can-eat buffet of styles at their disposal, their music could take any turn at any given moment. Indeed, Bambie suggests there’s stacks more unreleased songs waiting for their moment. When asked how representative Fangtasy might be of their musical future, they laugh.
“My music is just like my brain. It’s neurospicy! I don’t know if I have another song like Fangtasy, to be honest. Maybe it’s an outlier. But no, I have so many different flavours and I’ve got so many bangers in the vault. There’s some big dancey songs, some rocky songs, some country songs…”
There’s more than just a witchy aesthetic binding all these disparate sounds together. They might be a spooky individual, but Bambie’s not trying to scare you away. Instead, they’re luring you in. They’re connecting with you, and they’re connecting people.
At the end of their Grand Final performance at Eurovision, the last words they uttered after they’d finished their song were, ‘Love will triumph over hate.’ It might have been an injection of positivity in an unusually troubled, controversial edition of the contest, but perhaps this call for unity was also a mission statement.
Above all, Bambie says, their message is “to spread love and kindness through crazy art, [promote] acceptance, self-acceptance, highlight issues, change people’s minds and help people be more kind and accepting of others.” (True to form, when asked at the end of our conversation if there is anything else they wanted to talk about, they immediately reply ‘Free Palestine’.)
“I’m biased,” Bambie continues, “but I actually think [my fans] genuinely are the best. They’re so kind, they’re so good and I’m just so proud of the community we’re building.”
In 2024, perhaps more so than ever, community is everything. For a queer artist with a naturally strong queer fanbase, it is even more significant when this might be how a fan finds their chosen family. In the virtual spaces where Bambie Thug’s fans congregate, on Discord and in group chats, they educate each other on important political issues that Bambie has spoken about, sharing resources, all in a safe, loving space.
“I’m just trying to help people accept themselves more and be less afraid to be authentic,” they say. “I’ve already seen that that’s what it’s doing. I’ve had messages from parents or even [the fans] themselves about how they now feel like they can come out. I think it’s beautiful. It’s amazing.”
Now that sounds like magic in its purest form.
Bambie's new single Fangtasy is out now. They tour with BABYMETAL and Poppy next year – get your tickets now.
Read this next:
- “I need to create all the time”: Bambie Thug on new music, fighting for what’s right and the goth tour of the year
- Cassyette: “In order to evolve and for the scene to have culture, it has to have a bit of everything”
- NOAHFINNCE: “There’s always going to be people that can’t see me as anything more than an influencer, but they’re not worth worrying about”
