What makes Joost Klein so popular?
On Thursday, May 9th, artist Joost Klein will represent the Netherlands during the semifinals of the Song Contest. How can his success and popularity be explained? “Klein’s music is much more European than we think.”
On the first day Joost Klein released the Song Contest song “Europapa,” he managed to reach two million views in no time. It made him the second-best-viewed broadcast on the Song Contest’s official YouTube channel.
Historian Jouke Turpijn researches youth culture and has been following Joost Klein for some time. “After that legendary performance at Pinkpop, I was told to keep an eye on Klein.” So what makes Joost Klein so popular?
“A big part of Klein’s success is that he references earlier times,” Turpijn said. “The funny thing is that for ‘Friesenjung,’ one of Klein’s biggest hits, he references a pretty bourgeois song, namely ‘Englishman in New York’ by Sting. But it’s the recognizability that works, in a new weird style where things are magnified enormously.”
For example, in the video of “Europapa,” Joost Klein’s outfit is a blue suit with huge shoulder pads and his hairstyle is a mullet. Turpijn says: “Those shoulder pads come from the 1980s and were worn to appear wider and taller, by women in a certain corporate culture, for example. In this way, Klein also makes himself look taller.”
And that’s exactly what appeals to people, according to Turpijn. “Many people who grew up in the ‘90s now have a steady job and the security that comes with it. They have money and look back to their youth, the ‘90s, with nostalgia. People in their late thirties and early forties are huge consumers of this type of product, separate from the young people of today. They make their own variations based on the nostalgic longing of their parents, in whom they see the lights go on in their eyes, so to speak, when they hear house music, and make their own versions of it.”
That is exactly what youth cultures do in the broader sense of the word, Turpijn says. “The joke is precisely that they keep referring to each other and other times. Joost Klein does that with the nineties, but without him, it still would have happened.”
Klein’s source of inspiration is Eurotrash and Europop, says Turpijn. “Think of 2Unlimited, 2 Brothers on the 4th Floor, but also the Eastern European song contest entries that were very popular in the ‘90s. By integrating all these different layers, Klein alone should be able to win. The song ‘Friesenjung’ is a reference to an Englishman in New York, a European in America. Looking even further, ‘Friesenjung’ is also about a Frisian in Germany. The lyrics mention many place names and are about travel. In short, Klein’s music is much more European than we think.
What does Turpijn think of the symbols and imagery Klein uses in his music? “The stereotyping is laid on so thick. There’s the local Frisian identity, but also the national identity with the windmills, and then there’s a European layer on top of that. All that makes it ironic. Klein is not a nationalist himself, but he plays with it. And that makes it funny.”
Will Klein win? The bookies initially predicted at least third place, but after seeing the first images of rehearsals they are suddenly not so sure. Turpijn: “There’s nothing meaningful that you can say about it. But we will continue to see Joost Klein no matter what. His style is fresh and new, just like the Jeugd van Tegenwoordig at the time, who suddenly spoke a new language as well. Klein brings a new sound that is quite simple. But sometimes simple is good enough, as we see now.”
