For decades, Stef Bos did not look back at Door De Wind, a song he wrote in his twenties and immediately released. It wasn’t until 2020 that Sanne Hans alias Miss Montreal sang it into the Top 2000. “In retrospect, it was a necessary song.”
A good song writes itself. This is what Stef Bos (Veenendaal, 1961) says in retrospect Through the wind, that he put down on paper in 1988. Bos was 27 years old and had recently graduated from the cabaret department of Studio Herman Teirlinck, the theater program in Antwerp.
“In the beginning there was the cabaret,” says the singer, at home in Wachtebeke, Belgium. “At secondary school in Ede I had a cabaret group with two friends, later a duo during the teacher training in Utrecht. In Antwerp I slowly let go of the cabaret style and the songwriter was born. Partly thanks to teachers like Johan Verminnen, Raymond van het Groenewoud and Jean Blaute.”
The many notes, texts and demos that he kept all this time prove that he started writing in a different way. „ Is This Now Later and Through the wind were in the same series. They were the first songs where I felt like I was on the flow of a message. I didn’t make up those songs, they kind of wrote themselves.”
Gift to his mother
Through the wind was a gift to his mother Neeltje. “She was a so-called DES mother, who was prescribed an incorrect hormone preparation in the 1960s. That has been fatal for many women. My mother has had a number of miscarriages – there is 8 years between my brother and my sister, even though she actually wanted a very large family. In addition, she developed cancer prematurely, related to that drug. It was unclear how long it would all take and I wanted to make something for her. Like: ‘Look mom, this is for you’.”
A very personal song, comparable in approach to his later breakthrough hit Daddy from 1991. “The personal aspect of Through the wind I never communicated like that at the time, because I didn’t sing it myself at first. My then girlfriend Ingeborg had the idea to participate in the preliminary round of the Eurovision Song Contest, to promote a theater tour. We had both just graduated. She heard the demo of Through the wind and asked if she could sing it. Sure, no problem, I was busy with other things.”
Completely unexpectedly, Ingeborg won the Belgian preliminary round in Brussels. “So we had to go to the final in Lausanne, Switzerland, since Celine Dion had won the year before.” In front of a European audience of millions, Stef Bos stood, virtually out of the spotlight, in the background choir. “I was able to watch the whole circus from a distance.”
‘It was all a bit lame’
Anyone who sees the images again will understand why Belgium was at the bottom of the final results at the end of the evening. “With all due respect to my then girlfriend, but it was all a bit lame.”
This not only applied to the presentation, it also applied to the production. It looks quite dated now. “Technically everything was in perfect order,” says Bos. “The guitarist who played on the single was Italian finger picking guest from Brussels. Really insanely good. And percussionist Chris Joris is one of the best in his profession. But the whole thing was a bit, how to put it… smooth.”
That was of course also the fashion at the time. For example, listen to Desire, that Bos composed for Clouseau in the same period. “That was even sooner than that Through the wind, because I made it for a project with Jean Blaute at drama school. Desire was typically a devised song, in which you place the chords in a certain order. I think I was listening to a Christopher Cross song and heard: ah, if I go that way, I can go this way and that way. The text of Desire I wouldn’t be able to get it out of my throat now.”
Bee Through the wind things are different, he says. “It meets all the classic rules for a pop song: within 3 minutes, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, go over it again and you’re done. But with this difference Through the wind, and that also applies to Is This Now Later, Daddy and – a little later – a song like Vodka, had some kind of necessity or urgency. It had to come out. If you look at your entire repertoire, you will see: this, this and this song are steps along the way in the same theme. On the way to the moment when you can tap it in. Through the wind was one of those. I wasn’t making something up, like I sometimes did before.”
Waving your underpants
Without all the Eurovision Song Contest frills, what remains is a very strong song. “I have the first demos of Through the wind I picked it up again, and what immediately struck me was the opening theme. Dádada dádada. A repetitive thing, like that Sad Song by Lou Reed. A bit heavenly. By the way, it’s also there, and now I’m completely freaking out Wave your underpants, wave your shirt out Yes Sister, No Sister (officially titled Castaway, ed.). And in one of my favorite songs that I got to know through my 10 year older brother: If You Were A King of The White Plains.”
It was also thanks Through the wind that he got a recording contract for his solo work. “Ingeborg really wanted to Is This Now Later record as a new single. But Hans Kusters, the music publisher, heard my demos and said: ‘All well and good, but we have to do a record with you.’ Until that moment I had not been concerned with that. I thought: that will happen when I’m about 35.”
His first album was released in 1990. But it would take years for him Through the wind on his own set list. “Because of that association with the Eurovision Song Contest, I have almost never sung it myself. Apart from a tour in 1994 or ’95, where I introduced it with a story making fun of Eurovision. It was never in my sights again after that.”
Until Stef Bos, after refusing the honor twice before, was featured in the television program in 2020 Dear Singers. “Of course there were many people who thought: are you participating in that, Bos? What finally won me over was… gut feeling. Intuition. It wasn’t that my career had to be pulled out of the doldrums or that it was part of a strategy. Absolutely not. But they also asked Diggy Dex and Milow. And I thought: that could be a lot of fun with all those songwriters on board.”
An introduction until the wee hours
Only on the plane to Ibiza, where Dear Singers is recorded, he met Sanne Hans, alias Miss Montreal. An introduction that continued at the hotel bar until the small hours. And one day later, during the first TV recordings, it would lead to a new chapter in both lives.
Like Ingeborg, Miss Montreal began her performance of Through the wind small and modest. But halfway through the first verse, her version turned into a raw power ballad that reached an apotheosis during the chorus. “I will never forget how Sanne suddenly sang that song from his chains,” says Bos. “She based herself on that naked version of me, alone at the piano. But she had said to band leader Mark Fisser: that’s where I want to pop out. And he knows what to do with such a clue.”
Bos was completely surprised by his own composition. “It came back like a boomerang. Do you know Nothing Compares 2 U from Prince? Yes, you think, good song. Until Sinéad O’Connor sings it, or Jeff Buckley. Then suddenly you hear: fuck, what a good song this is.”
A week after the TV broadcast, Miss Montreal entered the Top 40 and remained there for almost six months. With a 20th place, she was the highest ranked woman in the Top 2000 of 2021. Not surprising for a song that had to precede 19 competitors in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 32 years earlier.
“The success of Through the wind mocks all the laws of the time we live in,” says Bos. “Where making a successful song is almost a science, a strategy. I completely missed the boat on that front. And then suddenly Sanne Hans comes along, who gives that song new life with her Janis Joplin voice. It had no red carpet, no open door. But that song sneaked so into our time through a draft hole. No one saw it coming.”
The text, whether or not attributed to Miss Montreal, has since appeared frequently in obituaries. Like Daddy offers Through the wind comfort in the deepest sorrow: both songs are high in the Funeral Music Top 100. “My brother recently compared the Spotify figures and remarked dryly: ‘Well, mommy has surpassed daddy.’ That’s good then, isn’t it?
Covers in the Top 2000
The statement ‘you should stay away from some songs’ apparently does not apply to all songs in the Top 2000. There are quite a few covers, and some are even significantly higher than the original. A grip:
– Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (original by Bob Dylan, covered by Guns N’ Roses and Eric Clapton, among others)
– Ash (original by Stevie Wonder, covered by George Michael & Mary J. Blige)
– Black Magic Woman (original by Fleetwood Mac, covered by Santana)
– Live And Let Die (original by Paul McCartney & Wings, covered by Guns N’ Roses)
– Cocaine (original by JJ Cale, covered by Eric Clapton)
– I Heard It Through The Grapevine (original by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, recorded by The Miracles, Gladys Knight & The Pips, Marvin Gaye and Creedence Clearwater Revival, among others)
– I Will Always Love You (original by Dolly Parton, covered by Whitney Houston)
– MadWorld (original by Tears For Fears, covered by Michael Andrews & Gary Jules)
– Proud Mary (original by Creedence Clearwater Revival, covered by Ike & Tina Turner)
– Mr. Bojangles (original by Jerry Jeff Walker, covered by Sammy Davis Jr. and Robbie Williams, among others)