‘Then it pays to drive to another country to refuel’

Yves Berendse and Mart Hoogkamer release Christmas song: ‘This could become a classic!’

Singers Yves Berendse and Mart Hoogkamer are taking a shot at a real Christmas hit this year. Berendse and Hoogkamer hope to win over the hearts with ‘Wouldn’t want me to miss Christmas’ and ‘Christmas Party With Each Other’. 100%NL DJ Barry Paf explains why he thinks one of the two artists may have a classic in his hands. For years we literally had to search for Dutch Christmas hits with a candle. While almost every artist in America wants to make their own Christmas album (from Frank Sinatra to Mariah Carey), scoring a Christmas hit with a self-written song is not something many Dutch people can do. For exceptions to the rule, we have to go back in time. In 1976, folk singer number one André Hazes even broke through with a Christmas song: in Lonely Christmas, with a huge sob in his voice, he sang about the sad fate of a burglar in prison, while his wife and children celebrate Christmas with a different party. With the unforgettable phrase: ‘I feel like a Christmas tree without a peak’. Ten years later, tear-jerker king Koos Alberts also wondered: Why am I so alone at Christmas? Not because he is in jail in any case, but in his case too, ‘she’ celebrates Christmas with someone else and he doesn’t want another woman. Right in between, from 1981, dates the intensely hated by some, but still popular song about the pathetic Christmas rabbit Flappie, which ends up in three pieces on a silver platter on ‘First Christmas Day, 1961’, as comedian Youp van ‘t Hek sings in his ironic text about a childhood trauma: ‘Stood in front of the window for a long time, but the cage looked deserted’. Now perhaps Yves Berendse or Mart Hoogkamer will be added.

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