Easter doll is back as an all-encompassing party

It will be one of the few things that the average festival visitor has not missed: the crowds. Many Paaspop 2022 tents on the Molenheide festival site in Schijndel were so full this Easter weekend that at the start of some performances, literally no one could fit in anymore. Too ambitious trips due to the packed schedule – 275 acts – also had to be partly cancelled.

Paaspop grew from an idea for a festival in a riding school into an all-encompassing party weekend. This year, for the first time, there were more than 100,000 visitors. There is never a good weather guarantee around Easter, so all stages are covered. In the Phoenix tent, both Merol (Saturday) and Froukje (Sunday) get a large audience early in the day. Merol plays music that was released two days before. She dances and sings on stage, while her band makes the crowds swing on eighties productions.

Young pop promise Froukje runs onto that stage a day later, and just as she should have started the first lines of her breakthrough hit ‘Greater Than Ik’, she stammered overwhelmed: “I forgot my lyrics, because there are so many of you. !” Fortunately, she quickly recovers, with a generally strong performance, full of softly undulating couplets and electronic climaxes.

Many artists play the trump card of the special guest† Donnie navigates for an hour in front of a specially designed FEBO wall full of disco lights between songs from before and after his big break. That results in a dichotomy in his set. Mart Hoogkamer, René Froger and Frans Duijts come by for the new tearjerkers. Then the big Apollo tent explodes and the numbers are literally chanted by tens of thousands. His older repertoire, dry raps on Bas Bron’s electro funk, however, can count on a lukewarm response.

The success of rap mixed with tearjerker has not escaped the attention of another great pop rapper. At the end of his performance, Snelle, who previously also welcomed Maan on stage, provides one of the highlights of Paaspop 2022. Before that, he brings former kebab seller (and now folk singer) Ammar Bozoglu on stage and orders the audience to open the tent. abandoned in a polonaise. Within a few minutes the tent is as good as empty.

This year too, visitors are all coming for something different. Teenagers gather in The Warehouse, where the number of beats per minute has been around 120 for almost the entire weekend. Cheerful rappers such as Sjaak and Poke prove that there is also a lot of scope in that genre, for example through language-renewing sentences. The more intimate Smerrig tent does not keep up with that pace, but thanks to Brabant DJs it does guilty pleasures and R&B classics to the top.

New is the Cuba Libre tent, where tropical rhythms from Latin, salsa and reggaeton can be heard. Among the palm trees, parrots and cocktails, visitors are treated to bubbling performances there. On the other side of the festival, the Brits from White Lies finish their set so virtuoso that it quickly becomes boring. However, the reaction of the spectators betrays that the band is still a crowd favorite.

With bathtub swings, a comedy theater, a gigantic elephant made of pink balloons that parades across the site, walking hand massagers and a streaking Fat Dennis, and a wall of death at Thijs Boontjes, there was not only much to hear but also to see. ‘The greatest show on earth’ could be read on various neon-lit signs and banners. This expresses both self-confidence and ambition. Mix that with three days of sun and Brabant cosiness and Paaspop could not have wished for a better return.