And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #154: The Netherlands v John Ewbank

By | Published on Friday 26 April 2013

John Ewbank

Earlier this month, over here in the UK the death of a former Prime Minister resulted in some musical controversy. At around the same time, a fuss was brewing just across the North Sea over a song for The Netherlands’ new king.

Prince Willem-Alexander is set to take the throne in The Netherlands on 30 Apr, when his mother, Queen Beatrix, abdicates. To celebrate the royal promotion, the country’s National Inauguration Committee decided it would be nice if there was a new song to mark the occasion.

English born songwriter John Ewbank (pictured) was chosen as its writer, coming up with a song called ‘Koningslied’ (or ‘King’s Song’). Featuring lyrics suggested through social media and on the official inauguration website, and then sung and rapped by over 50 musicians, the single went on sale on last Friday. Accompanied by a video featuring happy subjects grinning into the camera and doing a three-fingered ‘W’ (for Willem) hand gesture (as they are told to in the song’s lyrics), it shot straight up the Dutch iTunes chart.

But despite the chart success, not all Dutch people were instilled with a tearjerking sense of national pride upon hearing the song. The same day the video and download went live, a petition against the song received 20,000 signatures, and eventually reached almost 41,000. Aside from its unrelenting sentimentality, there were complaints that some of the lyrics in the song were simply grammatically incorrect.

Launched by journalist Sylvia Witteman, the introduction to the petition announces, “In protest against the demented ‘King Song’, I renounce my position as a Dutch citizen”.

By the next day, the campaign against the song reached full steam – with so many people marking the official video as spam on YouTube that it was temporarily taken down, while others uploaded their own alternative songs.

Despite this, and reports that Ewbank had withdrawn the song in frustration, the National Inauguration Committee announced this week that ‘Koningslied’ remained the official song of the new king, and would be performed as he took the throne as planned.

The committee said in a statement: “Since the launch of the song there is a wave of reactions, mostly positive. It is clear that there are many critical voices in society about parts of the lyrics of the song. [However,] the artists [involved] have indicated they want to continue. And after consultation with [the Dutch version of the BBC] the NPO and John Ewbank, the Committee has decided to stick with ‘Koningslied'”.

After all that, I bet you want to see this video. Well, here it is:



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