Boom Bang a Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Bond and the Eurovision Song Contest overlap more than you might think. One is loud, glamorous, camp and massively popular with the gays. And then there is Eurovision.
The Eurovision song contest is one of those things which I imagine it’s difficult for anyone who has not seen it to get their head around. Even some hardcore Eurovision fans may struggle to understand what the hell is going on some of the time.
Around 40 countries competing to have the best song doesn’t exactly sound like a good time to many. But for gay men like me, it’s basically Christmas.
Christmas is typically a time when families get together and if you don’t subscribe to heteronormative ideas of family then it can be a miserable time. Many gay people love Eurovision because it brings them together with found family - people more like them - even if it’s just through a TV screen. And for those of turned off by more conventionally 'manly' competitive pursuits such as sport, it’s an international contest we can get behind. We can root for our country and feel a sense of national pride, even when our country comes towards the bottom of the score board.
Professor Brian Singleton, who has studied the sociology of Eurovision, says what made (and continues to make) Eurovision so attractive to gay men in particular is “the glamour, the spectacle” but also “all those things that gay men invest in to get away from the norms of masculinity.”
I would argue that lots of us queers invest in Bond in the same way: he's a deeply unconventional man (as I have explored - and continue to explore - at length of this website). Even so, James Bond and Eurovision might not seem, at first, to be natural bedfellows. But since when has what is widely held by society to be ‘natural’ ever been our thing?
For me, the most notable overlap in the Bond/Eurovision/queer three-part Venn diagram is the 2014-winning song Rise Like a Phonenix, performed by queer artist Conchita, the drag persona of Thomas Neuwirth. Neurith is a cisgendered gay man who queers gender norms by maintaining his distinctive facial hair while otherwise presenting as a woman. He’s also a Bond fan who says hearing Shirley Bassey’s performance of Goldfinger as a child left a lasting impression on him.
Even in its original Contest-winning version Rise Like a Phoenix doesn’t even attempt to disguise its Bond’s roots. A 2018 recording with the Vienna Symphony sounds even more like it’s just been ripped from the titles of a Bond film. On the same 2018 album, entitled From Vienna With Love, Conchita also covered Sam Smith’s The Writing On The Wall from Spectre and paid homage to Bassey more directly with her rendition of John Barry/Hal David’s Moonraker. In my eyes and ears, Bond and Eurovision are a ‘natural’ fit.
Cold War, hot pants
It sounds a bit mad on paper, like some of the Bond villains’ more baroque megalomaniacal schemes, but the Eurovision Song Contest was created to stop a war. Specifically, it was setup with the intention of promoting co-operation between European countries following the Second World War. What better way to effect world peace than uniting everyone in trying to outsing one another? Think along the lines of Elliot Carver’s diabolical plot from Tomorrow Never Dies but in reverse. As I say: mad.
Of course, it hasn’t always managed to achieve its aim, the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia was widely decried by most other European governments. But in fairness this is a song contest. No one's going to be taking home the Nobel Peace Prize! And although it was small compensation for the people of Ukraine, an outcome of Russia's illegal incursion was one of the best Eurovision songs of all time: 1944 by Ukranian act Jamala, which used history as allegory to comment on Russia’s more recent rapacious act. The song deservedly won the 2016 Contest (the orchestral version even sounds quite Bond-ian).
If any country is going to get hot under the collar about Eurovision it’s more than likely going to be Bond’s (and Crimea’s) old enemy, Russia. And this is where the queers play an important role.
This might be hard to believe, but Eurovision did not have an openly gay contestant until 1997 (Paul Oscar from Iceland). The following year saw the first openly trans performer, Dana International, taking to the stage (and winning the Contest) amidst much controversy. The Netherlands’ Duncan Laurence talked openly about his bisexuality ahead of competing and winning the Contest in 2019. The 2021 contest has its first trans host, NikkieTutorials.
And let’s not forget the dozens of songs over the decades that have included coded queer references or, in performance, featured dancing between people of the same sex. This has posed problems for broadcasters in countries where LGBTQ+ content is routinely censored, such as Turkey, Hungary, China and, yes, Russia.
Eurovision can be beautiful comrade
It’s fair to say that Russia’s gay right records has had its ups and downs. For the last decade or so, they have definitely been on a downer, with gays used as easy to persecute scapegoats as they have in other countries (including my own) through big chunks of history.
The irony with Russia is that they’re are a country with a long tradition of queer musical exports, including Bond film favourite composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Had he been alive today, I have a feeling Tchaikovsky would have been well up for penning a banging Eurovision tune. The only challenge would have been being allowed to compete for his home nation.
I really do feel sorry for whoever has to edit the TV broadcast of Eurovision before it goes out to the Russian public. If they were to thoroughly edit out anything that was gay the show would be approximately three and a half minutes long. This has especially been the case since 1998 when, for the first time, the live audience was allowed right up to the stage. This particular Contest took place on my doorstep, in Birmingham, UK. I can’t help feeling a sense of national pride as well as gay pride that we were responsible for showing the millions of people watching all of those rainbow flags held by members of the audience. Brian Singleton descibes 1998’s Contest as the ‘outing’ of Eurovision: many may have suspected Eurovision attracted a gay fanbase before but after 1998 we all knew for sure.
For most of the noughties I went through a phase of feigning disinterest in Eurovision. This was around the time when most of my waking thoughts were bound up with trying to conceal my gayness. Watching Eurovision seemed like it might be something of a dead giveaway.
If only I had known then how intimately wed with Eurovision that James Bond was. I could have pretended I was watching along to sate my appetite for all things Bond. Back them, being obsessed with Bond was part of my straight cover story. ‘David cannot possible be gay because he watches those films about a guy who beds all these women' (I should observe at this point that this was my internal monologue and no one I knew ever said this or probably even thought it. I don’t think it was fooling anyone, beside myself. Worst. Cover. Story. Ever).
Stand by your song
The Bond connections commence as early as the second Contest, in 1957. Seven years before she was painted gold in Goldfinger, Shirley Eaton recorded a contender for the UK entry (sadly, no recording has survived). The year after he recorded From Russia With Love, Matt Monro came second in the Song Contest. From Russia With Love and Goldfinger lyricist Leslie Bricusse put forward a song in 1964 too, although it wasn’t chosen to represent the UK. All Time High lyricist Tim Rice penned a potential entry in 1969. The singers of the German and French versions of unnervingly saccharine song Do You know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service sang multiple Eurovision entries for their countries. a-ha vocalist Morten Harket co-hosted the Contest in his native Norway in 1996. Licence To Kill co-writer Walter Afanasieff wrote a entry for Ukraine in 2011 which wasn’t selected. Die Another Day’s Madonna performed in the interval of the 2019 Contest.
Most successful of all those connected with both Eurovision and Bond was of course Lulu who won the Contest in 1969 with Boom Bang-A-Bang, a song whose lyrics seem to have at least partly informed 1974’s The Man With The Golden Gun (“Will he bang? / We shaaaaalllll seeeeeeee”).
Perhaps the most bizarre connection is this: singer and writer of Quantum of Solace’s title song, Jack White, receives royalties for the 2018 Contest-winning song ‘Toy’ sang by Israeli artist Netta. Apparently, the song copies parts of The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army (which, as it happens, was White’s homage to John Barry’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service).
You know the names. You might not know the musical numbers…
Around the time he was performing as Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, bisexual actor Alan Cumming was writing and performing his own spoof Eurovision song in mid-90s sitcom The High Life. The episode where he and his fellow flight attendants perform the sweetly dirty ditty (sample lyric: Pif Paf Pof, my heart goes Pif Paf Pof / Pif Paf Pof I want to have it off) was a regular favourite of me and my sister growing up, much to our parents’ chagrin.
More recently, the fifth Eon Bond himself, Pierce Brosnan, has starred in loving homage to the inanities and insanities of Eurovision, 2020’s Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Based on the critical consensus around Mamma Mia! it’s probably wise that he did not contribute any singing to the soundtrack. Bless you, Brozza.
The film does feature several songs which have already become classics among Eurovision acolytes, including the surprisingly moving Husavik (My Hometown) and novelty-song pastiche Jaja Ding Dong.
This is no time to be discussing politics?
Eurovision has always been political and not always with a small 'p'. There's a reason the UK has finished near the bottom for the last few years, regardless of the quality of our songs (clue: it begins with a B and it's not Bond).
Whereas the producers of the Bond film series have largely sidestepped geopolitics, the same can't be said of many Eurovision contestants. Even the executives of the European Broadcasting Union, the people who make the Contest, have gone on record to state overcoming differences is a key part of their mission. When it comes to making difference visible, the impact of Eurovision cannot be overestimated. And it's all wrapped up in such an attractive package.
Where else do we get to experience, in a single evening, several dozen performances from a range of artists with stagings that are as overblown and glamorous as a title sequence from a Bond film? That the performances often incorporate national signifiers bordering on stereotypes (clothing, props, instruments, vocal styles) gives them the travelogue feel we relish in a Bond film. At the end of Moonraker, Dr Goodhead famously tells Bond to “Take me around the world one more time”. On Eurovision night we all get to crisscross a large chunk of the globe from the comfort of our living rooms.
While it really is the taking part that counts, it would be nice for the UK to win the Contest one more time. In the meantime, we’ll watch our national representatives deck themselves out in elaborate costumes, bathe in dramatic lighting and dance like their (and our) lives depend on it. Because they might just end up stopping a war! Whatever happens, we’ll keep attempting re-entry - and enjoying every mad, wonderful, inspiring, uplifting, queer second of it.
I found these resources either useful or just fun to read
A great article on the queer appeal of Eurovision (which first introduced me to the work of Professor Brian Singleton)
https://www.france24.com/en/20150522-eurovision-gay-friendly-song-contest-lgbt-conchita-wurst
For more about the contributions of Bond-related artists check out this article from James Maude of Eurovision Song Contest United:
This article by Frances Robinson wittily breaks down 13 occasions Eurovision got very political:
https://www.politico.eu/article/13-times-eurovision-song-contest-got-political/
