It’s been one whole year since RuPaul’s Drag Race UK series 2 graced the world with – without a doubt – one of the best bops ever to exist in the history of music, as UK Hun was released and changed the meaning of the words ‘Bing Bang Bong’ forever.
After a seven-month hiatus due to the pandemic, the queens in the cast returned to the show in episode five in February 2021 for a girl group showdown, with the United Kingdolls going up against Bananadrama in The RuRuVision Song Contest.
Both groups performed their versions of the track created by songwriting duo extraordinaires Leland and Freddy Scott, who have been a part of the Drag Race franchise for several years, with the United Kingdolls – starring Bimini Bon Boulash, Tayce, Lawrence Chaney and A’Whora – being crowned the winners.
UK Hun has since become a beast of its own, with the United Kingdolls’ version of the track reaching number 27 on the UK’s Official Singles Chart and achieving an incredible, long-lasting legacy, which Metro.co.uk spoke to Leland and Freddy about in honour of its one-year anniversary.
Having been behind songs including Lucky, Break Up (Bye Bye) and I’m That B***h, we first wanted to pick the songwriters brains over what makes a banging Drag Race tune, with Leland saying that in his view, it ‘takes breaking every rule in songwriting’.
Drawing on his past experience writing for artists including Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande, he explained that it’s about capturing ‘elements that will stick with someone’, that will also turn a song ‘on its head and make it absolutely ridiculous’, adding: ‘Like if I was writing a pop song, but for Mary Poppins.’
Freddy offered a similar answer, explaining that there is ‘no recipe for making a hit’.
‘It’s really like driving a car with the lights off and flooring it and seeing if you don’t hit a wall, and then coming out a tunnel at the other end, and you’re like, “People loved this, that’s great!”’ he said.
‘The main things that we try to go after are: is this a catchy, infectious melody, are the lyrics broad enough and meaningful enough that if you’re a fan you know the references, and if you’re not a fan of the show is it going to be a bop either way?’ he outlined, adding that an important aspect of the process is ensuring that the queens are given moments to ‘shine’ with their ‘amazing talents’.
For a song like UK Hun, which sounds extremely quintessentially British, the songwriters drew from a range of inspirations, including Mary Poppins and – incredibly – Crazy Frog. Yes – that earworm from the early 2000s that will now be stuck in your head once again. Sorry not sorry!
When it came to using Mary Poppins as a reference for UK Hun, Leland compared the track to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, as it’s ‘something that doesn’t make sense lyrically but feels right to sing’.
The reason why Crazy Frog came into the equation, Freddy articulated, was because it was another song that ‘at its core, is really silly, but an incredibly infectious hit’.
‘There’s a science to it, but making the most out of the most simplistic, nonsense lyric possible, nonsense in a good way, I think was the goal. We boiled it down to what is catchy and what isn’t,’ he stated.
As far as nonsense lyrics go, ‘Bing Bang Bong, Sing Sang Song, Ding Dang Dong’ are definitely up there as some of the most simple-sounding, yet on the money when achieving a catchy phrase.
Having decided upon those lyrics early on in the songwriting process, the main challenge that the duo faced was figuring out the order of the three iterations of the rhyme, which Leland said took an hour or two to finalise.
‘When I’m writing a song, it’s all about the vowels, what vowels sound right with the melody. Then attaching lyrics to those vowels that feel right. We say: “Does that sing well?”’ he said.
‘It was Freddy and I sitting there and trying out, like a puzzle, which one comes first, which one feels right. Is it Ding Dang Dong, Sing Sang Song, Bing Bang Bong, and granted, it probably could have worked in a different way, but it’s all about feeling and it’s all about when we organised the lyrics to be Bing Bang Bong, Sing Sang Song, Ding Dang Dong, that felt right.’
While UK Hun has received widespread adoration across the fandom, Leland admitted that their aim with the tune was to be ‘polarising’, as they didn’t want there to be a ‘middle ground’ where someone would say, ‘I kind of like that’.
‘It’s either, “I love that and I can’t get it out of my head,” or, “I hate it.” Drag Race is such a fun playground as a songwriter and every time we get to do it is just an absolute riot,’ he said.
Despite the huge legacy UK Hun has had across the Drag Race fandom, Leland and Freddy haven’t had a chance to enjoy its impact fully in person nor meet the majority of the UK queens, given lockdowns were in full swing when the song came out a year after they first wrote the lyrics.
Of course, they have witnessed the joy it brought to both fans of Drag Race and people who have never watched the show before, with Leland expressing his happiness over Troye Sivan uploading a video of himself on social media singing the tune in a park as it was gaining momentum.
‘Drag Race is such a beautiful and important show and positive show and full of joy and emanates love, and so to have that moment and to have Drag Race have this cultural moment was really incredible,’ Leland said.
‘It was amazing to see online what was happening, but I was just watching it on my phone and so it was a little bit bittersweet,’ he added, emphasising how ‘special’ it was to be a part of something that proved a massive hit shortly before it was announced that BBC Three would be returning as a fully-fledged TV channel.
Freddy added that a time when there was ‘a lot of dread in the news’, a lot of people were ‘looking for something to take them out of that’ – and UK Hun definitely fit the bill, with London Mayor Sadiq Khan even quoting the lyrics in a tweet about Big Ben’s anniversary.
When Leland and Freddy write songs for Drag Race, they have to put the tracks together with the queens’ verses before watching the show, meaning that they don’t have the context of the contestants’ personalities and journeys paired with the lyrics.
Freddy said that he ‘loved everyone’s verses’ on UK Hun, praising both groups who performed it, although both he and Leland acknowledged that Bimini’s verse stood out to them from the start.
‘I’m a fan of all of them, but Bimini’s really stood out to me. She is a musician, she is a songwriter, she is an artist, and it was great,’ Leland said, as Freddy remarked that it reminded him of ‘Spice Girls at their peak’.
With Freddy stressing that the inspiration for Drag Race songs doesn’t run out because they ‘always have a lot of fun inspiration to draw from musically’ and a ‘new crop of talent to work with’, the duo have different ideas of the direction they wish to take for some of their future musical creations.
While Leland is veering towards wanting to explore more classical music, saying that he is ‘such a fan of Édith Piaf, classical and opera’, Freddy is hoping to give rock ‘n’ roll a spin.
‘There is a whole era of rock music with loud stage costumes, loud personalities that we have not fully gotten into in the Drag Race universe. There’s so much attitude, there’s so much stage bravado, there’s so much energy with rock ‘n’ roll, so I’d like to get into that more,’ he said.
We can see it now – a girl group called Head Bangers, tearing up the stage as RuPaul cackles with glee – the makings of Drag Race music genius.
Drag Race UK Vs The World airs on Tuesday at 9pm on BBC Three and is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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