Bastiaan Ragas has the feeling that, like Marco Borsato, he is on the blacklist of the Dutch radio stations. “Then they don’t have to and so they don’t turn your plate,” the singer complains.
Nowadays Bastiaan Ragas is best known as the man of Tooske Ragas, but long ago he was also successful with the Boyband Caught in The Act. Then he started making solo music, but he felt opposed by the Dutch radio stations, he says. “I have tried many things that have not succeeded,” he complains in the Weekend.
Bas is angry
His failures are numerous, says Bastiaan. “I have released music and tried for years to get that played in Hilversum. But that just didn’t happen. Then they don’t have to and so they don’t turn your record.”
There are only a few powerful people in Radioland, he continues. “The Netherlands is of course very small. That is really in that radio system, I am not only in this. There are a few people who make the playlist and thus determine who is or not successful.”
Hard
Bastiaan finds it very unfortunate that he can no longer work as a singer. “They sometimes say: the show business is a hard profession, and that’s the way the way artists are treated: one day you are the big star and the next day you will never be called again. That goes very rude, I have countless examples of that.”
Then he compares himself with Marco Borsato. “Marco is of course the example of how canceling culture a career and private life completely turns around, based on one not yet proven accusation. Everything you say about it does what I am saying about that now. Grure.”
Blacklist
Just like himself, Marco is not turned, says Bas. “Marco is of course on black lists at radio stations.
It is not spoken out loud, but that is true. But the greatest folk singer we know was also not of undisputed behavior. Suddenly there is a difference. “
He refers to André Hazes, who shared the bed with Rachel Hazes when she was still a minor. “That does not mean that I have an opinion about that – I have been a big fan of André Hazes Senior all my life,” he says. But: “Just explain that.”