The greatest camp creations don’t know they’re camp. Case in point: Spain’s 1969 Eurovision winner, Vivo Cantando.
The spectacle begins with a fanfare of tuxedoed male backing singers, who clearly wondered in from a solemn wedding. Then Salomé—glamorous, unbothered, dressed in blue car wash couture and made up excessively. This was early colour TV, and no hue was excluded.
What follows is 2.5 minutes of pure, unfiltered joy. A smouldering verse—a dramatic novella—leads to a cyclical upbeat chorus. It might have felt repetitive, were it not for a glorious interplay between Salomé’s escalating excitement, a live orchestra, and a syncopated pickup phrase that stretches time itself. Each time she sings it, she accelerates. The orchestra scrambles after her. The backing singers’ “hey”s fall in line.
Soon, the performance becomes a runaway train: faster, louder, more furious. Salomé is not alarmed. She is exhilarated. Her gestures grow grander. She switches to chest voice. She locks eyes with the camera. There’s a key change. Violins swoop.
And then—triumph! She raises both hands in victory. Her backing singers remain stoic. Everyone finishes together with one final barrage of gratuitous “hey”s. The train did not crash.
This was Franco-era Spain, where homosexuality was suppressed and camp was not a concept—it was a subversion. That something so gloriously flamboyant could erupt from such a repressive society is telling. Spain wasn’t just ready to come out of the closet. It was ready to burst out of it in sequins and song.