This New Song in "Everybody’s Talking About Jamie" Is the Highlight of the Film

20th Century Studios

15 September 2021 ∙ Originally published in them.

The new movie Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, an adaptation of the West End musical with which it shares a name, is a shiny, propulsive and high-energy affair. Like the stage show — and like the 2011 documentary, Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, which preceded both fictionalizations — the Amazon Studios film follows the story of Jamie, a gay teen in a small village who has a secret desire to perform as a drag queen.

The fact that this story has been told and retold again makes perfect sense. Jamie is a made-for-Broadway narrative about a young character who confronts conservative surroundings and discovers the power of self-belief. (See also The Prom, Billy Elliot, Kinky Boots, and countless other LGBTQ+-themed musical sensations.)

A new song written especially for the film, however, takes a surprising approach to the familiar story, exploring the tenderness beneath the musical’s gloss, and showcasing the importance of passing down queer wisdom from generation to generation.

Both fictionalizations of Jamie’s story show the aspiring drag queen seeking guidance from Hugo Battersby, the owner of a local fantasy boutique who used to perform as Loco Chanelle. In the stage version, Hugo reveals his fabulous past in a campy number titled “The Legend of Loco Chanelle (and the Blood Red Dress)” that’s part Joan Crawford melodrama, part Drag Race maxi-challenge.

In the film, however, the high-energy scene is replaced with the original song, “This Was Me,” which eschews all the vamping and mythmaking of “Loco Chanelle” and instead recounts Hugo’s personal struggles as a gay man during the ’80s and ’90s.

Here, director Jonathan Butterell drops the glittering music video aesthetic that glosses over the rest of the film while Hugo (Richard E. Grant) shows his new protegé home videos of his younger self (played by the original West End Jamie, John McCrea) hanging out with his friends.

The ballad is initially sung by Grant before the film dives headfirst into the tapes, in which “Love Train” singer Holly Johnson, former frontman of the iconic English synth pop band Frankie Goes to Hollywood, takes over vocal duties.

The change in singer is pragmatic, sure — Grant is no chanteuse — but it also poignantly reshapes the film’s sense of fantasy, giving the mentor character a legendary queer voice through which to remember his glory days.

Throughout the film, Jamie uses musical reveries as a way to escape into a more hopeful future, and here, that same sense of imagination is used to delve into a richly textured queer past. In this way, the film adaptation draws a direct line between queer elders and the next generation of LGBTQ+ people, showing how both groups use self-illusion and encouragement to construct better realities for themselves.

Lyrically, “This Was Me” is a moving testament to the resilience of LGBTQ+ people who lived in the United Kingdom throughout the AIDS crisis and during Margaret Thatcher’s blatantly homophobic rule. Actual video from U.K. liberation marches, Freddie Mercury’s public acknowledgment of his HIV status, and Princess Diana meeting with AIDS patients is spliced into Hugo’s own story, bringing a groundedness and sense of reality to an often fantastical film.

“Kept on partying ’til ’91,” Hugo sings, “until that fateful day / We were peacocks in exotic herds / Wouldn’t listen to the warning words / That’s the problem with such pretty birds / They always fly away / Even Freddie couldn’t stay.”

Grainy home videos of Hugo and his friends partying in gay clubs show a part of history seldom showcased in contemporary LGBTQ+ entertainment, which so often ignores queer culture’s deep roots to tell more presentist stories. As the song continues, the clubs are shown being raided by police, with many of Hugo’s friends dying during the AIDS crisis in the ensuing years.

But instead of serving as a simple reminder of what queer elders endured, the song ends on a note of survival and resilience. As the song concludes, Jamie is overcome with emotion and runs out of the shop, later confiding in a friend: “The drag queens in the olden days weren’t just queens, they were warrior queens. I thought I had it hard; they had the whole world against them and they still never backed down. Me, I just want to dance around, and show off, and be a bit famous.”

The friend then asks Jamie what he thinks old queens like Hugo fought for in their heyday. Embracing his drag persona — being his true self — is “how you honor them,” she tells him. It’s a small scene in a big musical, but it is a lovely coda to its most touching moment, and one that queer audiences are bound to cherish with teary eyes.

“This Was Me” is the film’s beating heart, a veneration of our history and an acknowledgement of the drag queens, trans women, and proud queers who led the charge towards liberation. Their activism and sacrifices are what have made possible Jamie’s radical day-to-day existence as a boy who won’t accept his school’s aptitude test results, opting for his own path as a proudly ordinary drag queen.

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie streams September 17 on Amazon Prime.