HEADER BY YOSEF PHELAN

Extravagant costumes, relentless dance smashers and groundbreaking queer visibility has made the Eurovision Song Contest a staple for the LGBTQ+ community, who come out in droves each year to champion their favourite artists and celebrate the ceremony’s inclusive values.

With this year’s Eurovision looming (visit here for everything you need to know!), we took a look back at some of the campest winners and performances in the contest’s iconic 67-year history, from ABBA (of course) to trans pioneer Dana International and drag hero Conchita Wurst.

ABBA – Waterloo (1974)

With their europop classic Waterloo, ABBA made history as Sweden’s first-ever Eurovision winners. (For the contest’s 50th anniversary, it was also ranked the competition’s best-ever song.) The performance was as camp and exuberant as you’d expect: Agnetha Fältskog served disco diva in her iconic blue jumpsuit and silver platform boots while Anni-Frid Lyngstad gave us glitzy boho in her terracotta ensemble. (The men were there too!) Waterloo catapulted the quartet to worldwide superstardom and served as a springboard for later camp pop culture moments such as every single ABBA song that followed, the theme song to Kathy Burke’s cult comedy series Gimme Gimme Gimme and Cher’s tribute album.

Celine Dion – Ne partez pas sans moi (1988)

Fact incoming: Celine Dion is one of the campest and most dramatic heterosexuals in the entertainment industry (and we love it). The pop icon wore a suit/tutu hybrid (?) for her 1988 performance of French-language ballad Ne partez pas sans moi, which is still regarded as one of the most popular Eurovision entries ever, largely because of Celine’s subsequent fame. Without this performance, a camp icon wouldn’t have been born and Priyanka would have never decimated the Canada’s Drag Race stage to her cover of I Drove All Night. Think! About! That!