28 years old and he’s released 23 more albums than you…
[Video][Website]
[3.71]
Abby Waysdorf: Every country has a Jan Smit, doesn’t it? Not just in the sense that his name is literally John Smith, but that every country has some kind of wildly successful singer of sentimental ballads/schlager geared towards the domestic audience. The domestic audience somewhere else, anyway, or maybe the domestic audience that’s your parents or aunt or grandmother, the ones who still live in the village after you’ve moved to Amsterdam. Every country has that. Jan Smit is one of the Netherlands’ biggest, a former child star who managed the transition, and of course he also presents TV shows, because don’t they usually? This is 2014, so his new song has a lot of EDM touches and Kraantje Pappie, who is now the go-to rapper for this kind of thing even after (or maybe because of) the hilarious disaster of the Koningsleid. It is absolutely ludicrous, but there’s something in its shameless populism that I can’t hate. It’s way too silly for hate. And it’ll be amazing after a few beers.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: After hearing this Dutch take on EDM/pop/rap, I’m going to pull up “Give Me Everything” from my laptop screen, forcibly turn the song into a physical mass, hug it and cry and never let it go. Because my GOD the alternatives could’ve been grim.
[1]
Alfred Soto: Can’t decide whether to channel La Roux or the opening notes of a WB teen drama.
[4]
Iain Mew: The hamster hardcore and Kraantje Pappie’s goonish confidence seem to come from an utterly different taste register to Jan Smit’s gravel sincerity. I don’t know how much of that is just me not understanding Dutch pop, but the collision between the two is my favourite part of a record where I don’t get on much with either of them individually.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: There’s a lot of nice sonic ideas present — the way the piano and the big dumb build-up intertwine, that rinky-dink keyboard that pops up — but it never really goes anywhere with it, or even delivers the pure, stupid fun that a song so EDM-aware has to. More like a test room, and what’s so enjoyable about that?
[5]
W.B. Swygart: I suppose that, to some extent, it is nice that there are people willing to treat “Dutch pop” as an unchanging, immovable concept, boshing and donking down through the ages. But there’s ways to make that interesting, and neither of these two have the charisma to get this anywhere near over the line.
[3]
Scott Mildenhall: Jan Smit has some real Shaggy/Rikrok/Rayvon tricks going on here, because he’s getting most of the credit given limited presence — one barely even felt, his delivery so tepid. At least his part has potential though. Afforded a better performance and extended at the expense of Pappie’s more varied yet vain efforts, they could be worthwhile.
[4]