Eurovision entry from the Netherlands: How Joost Klein grew up

Dutch artist Joost Klein travels to Malmö to win the Eurovision Song Contest – with an ode to Europe. Who is he?

Joost Klein in “Europe” colors Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT Agency via reuters

It’s been a joke among his followers for years. They keep writing on social media: “Isn’t Joost Klein the one who won the Eurovision Song Contest 2024?” May 9th will show whether they can predict the future. Then the flamboyant 26-year-old artist represented the Netherlands in the semi-finals of the song festival with the gabberpop song “Europapa”.

Joost Klein is already quite well known outside of the Netherlands. In February he toured Cologne, Berlin, Vienna and Zurich. The Berlin concert sold out so quickly that it was moved to a larger hall. Within five seconds, wrote one critic, Joost transformed the Frannz Club in Prenzlauer Berg into a seething crowd. The audience sang along to his hits word for word.

His participation in the Eurovision Song Contest fits perfectly with his motto: Joost Klein, dream big. This also applies to his success in Germany. “Might seem random,” Joost told the Dutch music platform last year 3for12, “But I fought for it. I put in blood, sweat and tears.”

There’s also enthusiasm in Germany

It all started in Zurich in 2019: Joost was the opening act for American rapper Yung Gravy and noticed that his music was well received. From then on, he decided to take advantage of every opportunity to perform abroad. He did preliminary programs in Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, among others. He paid his own hotel and travel expenses.

His breakthrough in German-speaking countries was “Friesenjung”, with the Berlin rapper Ski Aggu. The song – an adaptation of the song of the same name by comedian Otto Waalkes – was number 1 in the German charts for a month last summer and has now been streamed over 122 million times on Spotify. There was an extensive marketing plan behind it: Joost, for example, produced a whole series of Tiktok videos for 75-year-old Waalkes. “I’ve never tiked Tok so hard,” he said.

A German acquaintance sent Joost Waalkes’ song. He had heard that Joost was making an album about Friesland, the northern Dutch province where he grew up. Joost Klein had never heard of Otto Waalkes and he didn’t know that there was a German Friesland. He thought the song was “really cool,” he said 3for12. But it wasn’t until he was in the studio with Ski Aggu that he realized it could be a hit. “Aggu said to me: This tune is legendary, man! You sampled Otto! what the fuck. This is a legend.”

All they had to do was get permission from Waalkes. For this, the two made a Tiktok video in which a whole stadium full of people, led by Ski Aggu, shouts: “Please, Otto, please, please, Otto, please!” In the comments, Joost Klein wrote: “Please, Otto, I’m a Frisian boy too! It means a lot to us!!!!” The plan worked: Shortly afterwards, Otto gave his official blessing.

“I’m a Frisian boy too!”

Waalkes later said yes to the success of the song Picture: “It makes you young again. It’s really crazy, it’s very refreshing.” By the way, with this version of “Friesenjung” Waalkes reached his highest place in the charts of all time.

Before he turned to music, Joost Klein was active on YouTube. Under the name EenhoornJoost, he made absurd short films about his life, sometimes editing them for up to six hours.

In Friesland, the northern Dutch province where he grew up, he often felt like an outsider. “My classmates came to school in wooden slippers, and I came in sparkly Nikes,” he said in an interview with de Volkskrant. The Internet fascinated him immeasurably; he could safely retreat there. “YouTube makes me feel like I’m everyone’s neighbor.”

He released his first album, “Scandinavian Boy,” in 2017. His talent was quickly recognized. Critics saw his music as reflecting a genuine love and knowledge of hip hop. At the same time, Joost constantly plays with clichés and (self-)irony.

Versatile artist

Anyone who wants to pigeonhole him into a genre or even just a “musician” is doing him an injustice. From his poetic and sometimes inexplicable lyrics (“the Zinédine Zidane of nonsense,” he raps about himself, for example) to his outfits (he likes to combine a Scottish kilt with a pair of barbecue tongs) to his hyperactive ones, often partly on the street filmed video clips: Joost is an artist, even if he wouldn’t describe himself as such.

He said opposite de Volkskrant: “I’ve always found it difficult when people want to know what exactly I do, when they want to put a label on me. I’m doing enough, that’s not the problem. I don’t necessarily see myself as a rapper. If you are at three months [der Supermarktkette] Albert Heijn works, aren’t you just a shelf stocker forever?”

Joost Klein’s performances are like a roller coaster ride. Just like the beats of his music, he jumps around the stage – with make-up or not. He likes to act like a clown, but his lyrics are anything but superficial.

As a teenager he lost his father and mother in quick succession and later had serious mental problems. He let his heart out on the 2022 album “Fryslân”. In “Wachtmuziek”, for example, he sings about the long waiting lists in the healthcare system on a cheerful beat. The song “Florida 2009” refers to a recent vacation with his parents.

Also serious texts

Joost Klein rarely gives interviews. He has little use for traditional media – after all, he didn’t need it to become famous. He also doesn’t want to be read as a “glorification” of a sad story, he told the music platform 3for12. “I am not an object. I may be an orphan, but I didn’t choose this.”

What he did choose, however, was his own clothing line at a budget chain, including flip-flops that said “Weeskind.” Here again, typical Joost Klein irony: “Weeskind” not only means “orphan” in Dutch, but also “be childlike”.

According to his own statements, he worked on “Europapa”, the song with which Joost is going to the song festival, for a year. It has become a “very Dutch song”: The song contains musical references to almost all types of dance that originated in the Netherlands. Hardcore DJ Paul Elstak – a living legend – is one of the producers.

The lyrics are partly sung, partly rapped and partly spoken. Mainly in Dutch, with a few sentences in English and German and a few words in French and Italian. The song is a homage to Europe, said Joost Klein at the presentation. And to his father. “He taught me in a small village in Friesland that the world has no borders.”

Pro-European message

Historian Dean Vuletic, author of the book “Post-War Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest,” finds the Dutch contribution’s explicitly pro-European message fascinating. “The Eurovision Song Contest is one of the few cultural events that manages to unite so many Europeans, yet there have been hardly any songs about European integration.”

The best-known example, says Vuletic, is probably “Insieme: 1992,” with which Italian Toto Cutugno won in Zagreb in 1990. “But of course that was right after the end of the Cold War and therefore a special edition.”

Although “Europapa” immediately went to number 1 in the charts in the Netherlands, the song also received criticism. The burning windmill in the music video is seen by some as a symbol of Dutch identity, which must make room for open borders.

Mirror of changes

However, according to Vuletic, it is the other way around: “If you listen closely, you will hear that the beginning is about enjoying the greatest achievement of the European Union, which is the ability to travel freely. I know that Joost Klein interprets it as a song about his family, but I think there is also a message in it about what we are in danger of losing with the rise of Eurosceptic far-right parties: the European part of the Dutch identity.” The Eurovision Song Contest , says Vuletic, has always been a reflection of Europe’s political, economic and social changes.

May 9th, the day Joost Klein reaches the semi-finals in Malmö, is also the annual celebration of peace and unity in Europe. It will be 74 years ago that French minister Robert Schuman laid the foundation for the European Union with his proposal for a European Coal and Steel Community.

It is clear that Joost’s appearance will be a celebration. The question is whether international viewers will understand the complexity of “Europe”. In any case, Joost has already shown that he can get the Dutch and Germans moving.