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‘If all I cared about was a career, I’d make listenable music’: Joost Klein on Eurovision, scandal and having the last laugh

The wild child ‘gabber pop’ rapper was booted off last year’s song contest. But his song Europapa eclipsed the winner’s – and he’s about to tour the world in his gigantic shoulder pads

But instead of gearing up for his big moment, Klein spent seven hours that day sitting in his changing room in a reflex-blue, Ursula-von-der-Leyen-meets-Vivienne-Westwood suit with gigantic shoulder pads, fearing he was about to be arrested – on live TV – over a “backstage incident” after the semi-final the previous evening. When my father died, the first thing I did was make 20,000 videos for YouTube with silly dance moves Yet now, in the spring of 2025, Klein is celebrating the release of his new album Unity with an 18-stop, 35,000-ticket tour that doesn’t just loop in Friesland and Wallonia but also includes sold-out shows in London and LA – a historic first for someone “yapping in Dutch”, as he puts it. “For me, that’s not really a nice moment to, I don’t know, film somebody.” Sweden’s public prosecution service initially said Klein made a movement that hit a female camera operator’s equipment, though it closed its investigation last August after concluding that there was no proof the singer had intended to cause “serious fear”.

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