Four years ago the satirical site De Speld came up with a number so-called vegetarian schlagers, such as ‘Do you have tempeh for me?’ and ‘I’ll eat a whole eggplant if you look at me, darling’. They were two-line parodies of major Dutch hits such as ‘Have you a moment for me’ by Frans Bauer and ‘I get a very special feeling inside’ by Corry Konings. And ‘vegetarian schlagers’ was of course a pun on the Vegetarian Butcher, the Dutch company that has been marketing meat substitutes since 2010 (acquired in 2018 by Unilever, a food group).
That Speld satire has now been followed up. Last week, rapper Donnie and the Vegetarian Butcher introduced a new genre in Dutch folk music: the vegetarian schlager – schlager as in a popular sing-along.
Rapper Donnie (Donnie Ellerström, 1994) is known for mixing hip-hop with life’s songs in his songs. He previously worked with Frans Bauer, among others. The Vegetarian Schlager is an advertising song, product placementto introduce the new vegan variant of the cordon bleu (a piece of flattened meat with cheese and ham folded into it): the ‘cordon happy’, a soy meat substitute containing vegan ham and plant-based cheese.
Although the song is an advertisement, the well-intentioned meat substitute plays a supporting role in Donnie’s song ‘The Vegetarian Schlager’. This hit song does not have a serious, committed message, nor do other sing-along songs. It is mainly about the cheerful atmosphere, as is evident from the clip: old-fashioned social gathering, but not with bitterballen, sausage or schnitzels, but with modern meat substitutes – which are accepted without a boo or a bah. It is time, Donnie announced when introducing the song, to participate in “a crunchy one vegan polonaise”. The song contains a few great lines, such as “Just like in the old days, it will be later”, which leads via “and you know that I enjoy” to the sing-along chorus “the vegetarian schlager, now that is a song for life!” As far as we know, this is the Netherlands’ first truly vegetarian song. You can see it as a counterpart of the advertising song ‘Chicken, the most versatile piece of meat’ that has been heard on radio and television for decades. That was an advertising song for the poultry sector, which received millions of subsidy from the European Union for that promotion.
The reactions to this new sing-along on Donnie’s YouTube channel Maradonnie are mixed, from enthusiastic to critical of the commercial side. One fan complains that we first got “EU propaganda” with Joost Klein’s Dutch entry ‘Europapa’ for the Eurovision Song Contest 2024 – which Donnie co-wrote – and now also sung propaganda for meat substitutes.
Still, this rapper’s joint venture with the meat-substitute industry may not exactly come as a shock to fans. Because rapper Donnie had a vegan cooking show on TV in 2020, in which he prepared vegan food together with stars. He developed a vegetarian nasi snack for snack bar chain Febo. That is his culinary side: before Donnie became a rapper with the help of De Jeugd van Nooit, he attended pastry training in Amsterdam. And: “You can experiment endlessly with plant-based food,” he said in Het Parool.
There are more pop stars who are committed to vegetarian eating, such as Paul McCartney, who started a global non-profit campaign to not eat meat on Mondays, and also made a song about it: ‘Meat Free Monday’.
Donnie’s vegetarian schlager has the same kind of cheerful catchiness as José Feliciano’s Christmas carol ‘Feliz Navidad’. Traditionally, a lot of meat is eaten at Christmas, which also leads to extra thoughts and poems about vegetarianism. For example, poet Willem Wilmink wrote in his ‘Comfort song for those who are alone at Christmas’: “Remember the animals on the bowls and plates, / they are in the puree more than you are. / Eating is better than being eaten, / also in the brilliance of Luke 2.” Where ‘Luke 2′ refers to the Bible book in which Jesus’ birth is described.