Girls group K3 has many faces, but was actually Peter, Alain and Miguel all along

The aim was a Flemish Spice Girls. A blonde, a red, a black haired: a proud reference to the Belgian tricolor. Karen Damen, Kristel Verbeke and Kathleen Aerts were the first in 1998. They couldn’t really sing, but that didn’t matter for the success.

K3 is still immensely popular. About seven hundred thousand fans listen to Julia, Marthe and Hanne and their predecessors every month. There are shows for children and adults, there are pens, caps, comic books, duvet covers, diaries and dolls. But while Karen, Kristel and Kathleen were already approaching forty in 2009 and, according to some, it was high time to hang up their miniskirts, the trio Peter (Gillis), Alain (Vande Putte) and Miguel (Wiels) continued to write tirelessly. .

With more than three hundred songs to their name, it is now a good thing for the songwriters: they are quitting. The current singers continue and give about three shows per concert day.

Formula

K3 was a concept created by singer and radio presenter Niels Williams. A well-known figure in the Flemish media landscape, who also employed the composers at the time.

“It was not intended for children at all,” says copywriter Alain Vande Putte (59) from his studio in southern Spain. The lyrics of their first hit, ‘Heyah Mama’, indeed indicate that the writers were not just writing for three to thirteen year olds: ‘I know a place where they won’t find us / You can devour me / Do it very softly / No cries and no smiles.’

From the start, Peter Gillis did the production, Miguel Wiels and Alain Vande Putte the lyrics and music. “Miguel came up with this rather childish melody for ‘Heyah Mama’ and then I made the lyrics a bit more spicy, that was our briefing. After the first performances it turned out that very young children in particular were fans.”

Success did not come easy. In 1999, K3 participated in the Flemish preliminary rounds of the Eurovision Song Contest. It was the first time the girls sang live. The jury’s verdict was unrelenting: “Fine cold cuts, ladies, but cold cuts are also cold cuts and in terms of songs, that means cold cuts with pears,” said jury member and singer Marcel Vanthilt. They did not get through the preliminary rounds. Yet the ambiguous mix of sweet pop and worldly lyrics was a huge hit in Flanders and the Netherlands. From 2000 onwards, hits such as ‘Alle Kleuren’, ‘Tele-Romeo’ and ‘Oya lélé’ were at number one in the charts for weeks.

Founder Williams sold the pop group to the Belgian entertainment empire Studio 100 in 2002. According to Vande Putte, an important factor in the success of K3. “In the beginning we really had to rely on the hits. With Studio 100 came the marketing, the merchandise and the musicals.” K3 became a formula.

Every generation, like its own James Bond, has its own K3

Fantasy world

Every generation, like its own James Bond, has its own K3. When the original trio Karen, Kristel and Kathleen stopped in 2015, new leading ladies were sought through TV formats. “At those matches, K2 is looking for K3I had my doubts. I thought the audience would not accept that, but I was wrong,” says composer Miguel Wiels, who left the team in 2019. He had no more inspiration. “We create a fantasy world and it doesn’t matter to the children whether the blonde is Klaasje, Josje or Kathleen.”

Five new K3 members follow on stage who, completely in the tradition of the pop sensation, appear on stage in rainbow dresses and with bows in their hair. Studio 100 director Gert Verhulst, known for the children’s program Samson and Gert, makes no bones about it: “I want to see bare legs. Dads should benefit from it too,” he said in 2009.

Vande Putte does not feel comfortable with that statement. “The fact that they were slim, pretty girls in short skirts does indeed meet a stereotype, but that has nothing to do with sexism,” he says. He can understand that it was a bit of a gray area in those early years because the songs were embraced by a very young audience.

“Sexualization and sales of music have always gone hand in hand,” says Vande Putte. “Look at Cardi B or Beyonce, who really sell their bodies instead of their music. If you attack K3 for short skirts and men who would make money from it, then you really do it to take them down.” He doubts whether the girl group could be restarted at this time: “I don’t think so, even the original K3 is much too good for the current music scene.”

Ethos

The fact that the K3 formula has stood the test of time is not only due to the marketing machine Studio 100, both songwriters emphasize. From the start, it was important for the composers that there was layering in the texts, precisely to reach children and parents. “The people who write off K3 as just fun are not listening properly,” says Vande Putte. Take the lyrics of their first hit, ‘All Colors’: ‘Why do people hurt each other so much/Wouldn’t it be better if we were tolerant from now on?’ “It’s simply mind-blowing when eight thousand children and parents sing that together. You shouldn’t be cynical about that, then it’s better to start working on the assembly line.” Wiels is also proud of the message in that song: “We wrote that at a time when the extreme right was rising in Belgium, that this became such a hit was really a victory.”

Attempts have also been made to roll out the formula abroad. Copies were made in Germany; Wir Drei and South Africa; X-4, which flopped. According to Vande Putte, because the songwriters there did not take it seriously enough. His favorite song? “’The world is much more beautiful than you think’, from 2019. That’s really where the ethos of K3 lies, in that one sentence.”

What K3 sounds like without Peter, Alain and Miguel can be heard in the latest single ‘Iliake’, which was released last week. The song seems to fit seamlessly with the group’s ethos with its catchy beat and moralistic lyrics. No one knows what or where Iliake is, but that is also completely in line with previous hits such as ‘Kuma he’.

Studio 100 says it will now work with a changing team of writers. Wiels has listened to the single once: it meets the K3 formula and he hears that it has been worked on with new inspiration. It is still too early for Vande Putte: “I am not yet ready to listen to songs written by others.”

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