Recently, I’ve been getting way too into Eurotrash music. My Spotify likes is clotted with Dutch gabberpop, German Soundcloud mumble rap, Estonian electric techno. This past summer, I traveled 4,000 miles to Finland just to see a handful of artists who didn’t win Eurovision. I take Eurotrash both seriously and unseriously. That is to say, I think it’s art.
Outside the context of a grimy discotheque throbbing with strobe lights, there’s a sort of clarity that comes with listening to Eurotrash. When I get stuck while writing, I look for ways to compress time. If the song I’m listening to hasn’t ended, time hasn’t passed. Eurotrash fits this need; music with grating, artificial beats loop nicely. Languages I don’t understand remove the distraction of words. A constant and energetic tone keeps me focused, accelerates my thoughts to the speed needed to multitask. Alone in the darkness of my room, Eurotrash convinces me that my mind is capable of work.
After some time, I realized that the momentum inherent to Eurotrash could fuel other tasks. Blasting Polish hardcore to stay awake while driving. Humming along to Irish rap while shoveling feet of snow. Scream singing to Finnish metal, trying to mimic the sounds, to banish the migraine brewing beneath skin. While the genre’s high BPM (beats per minute) was invigorating, I quickly found myself interested in the content of the work itself: when I imitated lyrics, what was I actually saying?
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that much of the music I enjoyed incorporated some component of nonfiction. Emboldened by a breakneck beat, Eurotrash reserves space for societal commentary through the lens of the speaker’s experiences. Translations by fans on Twitter showed that a favorite Finnish song reflects on the sexual objectification the artist forced himself to endure to further his career, while another in Irish criticizes the lasting impact of British colonialism in Belfast. These perspectives are important, their weaving of memoir with different genre conventions formally interesting, but the lack of official translations implied that the lyrics weren’t worthy of a broader audience.
As I dug deeper, I became curious about the different forms of Eurotrash as art. I mean this earnestly. The genre was already so closely connected to the creation of art in my mind – no amount of overwhelming synth or obnoxious -teks would be able to change that. (I’ve tried – I’ve unconsciously conditioned myself, unable to go to sticky techno shows without writing essays in my head.) I think a lot of things can be art, in the same way that I think a lot of things can be an essay. Maybe I was introduced to dadaism a bit too early, but I see art as anything that speaks towards a greater emotional truth, regardless of form, regardless of structure. Despite affectionately pinning “trash” onto the label, in most instances, Eurotrash is, indeed, art.
Not many people agree. While I can understand their hesitancy to recognize more experimental work as art, I still find myself consistently frustrated. In writing nonfiction, the form I most align with is the lyric essay, its associative connections corresponding with the way I view myself in relation to the world around me. If experimental nonfiction writing can integrate poetry and painting, if it can crawl into the shell of another thing, why limit unconventional music? If an artist arranges their experiences to an electronic beat, why isn’t it memoir? To not accept Eurotrash as having the potential to be nonfiction feels almost hypocritical.
There’s one artist in particular who received criticism I found disappointing. In 2024, Dutch contestant Joost Klein was disqualified from the Eurovision Song Contest. While he had been popular in the Netherlands and Germany prior to the competition, the exposure expanded his reach, opening new avenues for praise and critique. Yet most of this attention centered around his disqualification; media coverage clung onto Klein’s past, raking through his interactions with the press to confirm the narrative they’d created. In Malmö, they only heard the bubbly techno beat, only saw the exaggerated shoulders of his blue suit, and assumed that his performance had been a joke.
**
Much of Klein’s discography is inspired by gabber, a subgenre of hardcore that rose to popularity in the Netherlands in the early ‘90s. A fast, grating beat was created electronically, run through synthesizers and drum machines. Vocals, when included, were short and repetitive, a clip to cling onto, distinguishing one track from the next. Samples forced songs to interact with the world around them, the context of their creation: other tracks, commercials, speeches, interviews, ringtones, train stop announcements. Gabber absorbed all forms of audible media, layers tightly woven together to create a textile of time and place.
Culturally, gabber’s influence extended beyond music. In English, gabber means “friend,” but the term is expansive, incorporating the genre, its listeners, and the resulting subculture. The gabber aesthetic sought to facilitate an ease of movement. A quick, aggressive dance step evolved to fit the speed of gabber’s sonics. In abandoned warehouses, gabbers rapidly shuffled their legs to hakken to sharp break beats, nylon track suits rustling, heads shaved bald to prevent overheating. Rooted in a need for collective escapism, the hurried beat accelerating towards a better future, gabber was incredibly appealing to younger listeners. Within years, gabber had distinguished itself as the largest youth movement in the history of the Netherlands.
By the turn of the century, gabber’s popularity had significantly diminished. Over two decades later, Klein leans on the nostalgia of gabber to create contrast. Jumping, screaming, lamenting the loss of his parents in “Papa en Mama.” Spinning, twisting his limbs, reflecting on feeling abandoned in a changing world in “2002/2001.” Shifting his feet to hakken as he criticizes the Dutch mental healthcare system in “Wachtmuziek.” The resulting music is a fun beat to jump to in the club with lyrics to deconstruct as you drive home, eyes glazed over, energetic with a melancholic aftertaste. Allied with producer Tantu Beats, Klein reimagines gabber to create gabberpop.
“Europapa,” the song he presented at Eurovision, is no exception. While Klein understood that a maximalist version of his modernized gabber wouldn’t fit the competition’s broader fanbase, the song is still rooted in gabberpop’s sonics. Heavier kick drums and synth sink to the bottom of the track, propping up the lighter piano. The beat is solid yet punchy, looped samples of sirens and shouts maintaining momentum. Steadily, the pace increases until the synth becomes overpowering, the beat rolling over itself until the gabber overwhelms the pop. Then, just as suddenly as it started, the song rolls to a close, a single shout silencing the beat.
Klein’s vocals throughout are tonally optimistic. In Dutch, he imagines a Europe without borders. Despite abandoning his passport at home, he’s able to travel freely across the European Union, reuniting with loved ones in different countries. Through his travels, the artist gains more agency over his own actions. The chorus of “Welkom in Europa, blijf hier tot ik doog ga/ Welcome to Europe, stay here until I die” emphasizes the comforting nature of Klein’s utopia. With the rest of his life in front of him, Klein can see no reason to leave.
Yet in the transition from the first verse to the second, Klein’s hopefulness dissolves. Leaving home had only been a distraction; in Germany and Italy he still feels hollow. Food offers no comfort. Smiling through the audio, Klein explains that his only avenue for success is professional. The repeated refrain of the chorus darkens; a place without borders offers no escape. Hakkening, Klein cheers.
On stage, the song fades into a somber “Europapa: Outro.” The gabber scaffolding dissolves, leaving only the piano. In a forlorn voice, Klein mentions that he had been walking through fields, remembering his parents. Following their loss, darkness encroached earlier, days becoming shorter. Gradually, a violin hums the chorus, the performance fading to light birdsong.
**
Despite “Europapa’s” complexity, the majority of discussions surrounding Klein’s work centered the interpersonal issues he faced during Eurovision. Following a backstage altercation with a member of the competition’s production team after the semi-final rehearsals, Klein was disqualified. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organization responsible for the event, refused to clearly outline what had occurred. Rumors of Klein physically attacking a woman backstage quickly proliferated.
When these statements couldn’t be immediately confirmed, criticism shifted to Klein’s validity as an artist. His openness about his mental health labelled him as “too emotional,” the media painting him as less masculine, less strong. Klein is tall, favors a shockingly blonde mullet, is coated in Pete Davidson-esque tattoos. His old music is littered with meme culture, Minecraft and Pokémon references woven through silly songs he composed years earlier. At 26, his past was used against him. Suddenly, the reception of “Europapa” shifted. Klein, fitted in his blue suit with shoulder pads that grazed his ears, had never taken the competition seriously. Gabber was irrelevant, the young adults of the youth movement now grown. The Dutch lyrics were confusing. The song was gimmicky, an empty appeal to win votes.
The truth of what happened wasn’t deemed important. In the competition’s 68 years, no contestant had been disqualified before. When Klein voiced his disappointment, he was laughed at – how could a campy song competition pose a threat? Why had he taken something so unserious seriously?
**
Here’s what happened. Prior to Klein’s disqualification, “Europapa” had been slated to do quite well. Yet to Klein, performing alone was a privilege. Prior to his father’s passing in 2010, Klein, then aged 12, promised he would participate in the song competition in his father’s honor. The following year, his mother passed as well, making the artist an orphan at age 14. His performance in Malmö was dedicated to them, the energetic, jumping beat fading to a solemn epilogue, a handwritten “FROM: me TO: my parents” projected behind Klein’s forlorn silhouette, his body shaking with silent sobs.
After, still teary eyed, he stepped off the stage and prepared to run towards the opposite side of the venue for the next event. In-ear monitors in his fist, baggy blue trousers dragging behind him, he looked for his creative director but couldn’t see him. He asked a videographer for directions. She began filming him instead, collecting behind the scenes footage for a proposed Eurovision documentary. Frustrated, Klein asked her to stop. The artist had been very vocal about his mental health; as someone with autism, anxiety, depression, BPD, and PTSD, he required additional time between sessions and required his creative director to help manage the Dutch delegation. While this was an accommodation that the EBU initially agreed to, the videographer continued recording. Klein asked again, more forcefully. Again, she refused.
In response, Klein allegedly “made a threatening motion towards the camera.” Months later, the Swedish courts would rule that this action was not “capable of causing serious fear,” but in the moments immediately following the disagreement, the EBU didn’t agree. Instead of shepherding Klein towards the next segment, they led him to a windowless room beneath the stage, locking him inside for eight hours without water, without explaining what happened. He begged for help, for the opportunity to apologize and explain his perspective. The EBU refused. Shortly before the finals, they announced that Klein was disqualified, citing his violation of policies intended “to ensure there is a safe working environment for all staff.”
As time passed, Klein would open up about this treatment. While the EBU promised to provide all contestants with access to mental healthcare throughout the competition, Klein was never given the necessary support, despite requesting it several times. He suffered harassment from other delegations, one of which recorded him using the restroom. Klein repeatedly asked for help. The EBU, the organizers of a contest dedicated to ensuring “universality” and “inclusivity,” remained silent.
**
As a writer, whenever something bad happens, I find myself repeating some iteration of: “It’s ok because this is going to go hard as an essay.” The idea that a negative experience can be reclaimed through nonfiction has become my first way of comforting myself. At this stage, I haven’t fully understood why something is upsetting. I only know I am hurt.
Through the process of writing, I inevitably realize what triggered a certain response. Words shape experiences, articulate the specifics of perspective that’s often lost in internal rumination. Creative nonfiction forces the speaker to honestly contend with their actions and reactions, but the process of digesting emotion through essay takes time. While the exigence of a piece may be questioned, it’s uncommon for memoir to be heavily criticized for taking too long to produce. The artistic process is one that often requires a longer timeline.
Yet this time is only afforded to artists deemed deserving. Less than a year after his disqualification, Klein released his eighth album: Unity. Of the collection’s 16 tracks, a number reference his Eurovision related trauma. In “Why Not?” he raced alongside a pop-punk inspired gabber beat, proposing different the facets that may have motivated the EBU to disqualify him. In “Luchtballon” he abandoned incessant questions, secluding himself away from reporters, and floating up in a hot air balloon. In “United by Music,” he presents a string of hypocritical statements, implying that the EBU is unable to align their actions with their morals. Braiding memoir and gabberpop, Klein began to process the emotional impact of his trauma.
Indeed, the disqualification had rattled Klein. When discussing Eurovision, he would get visibly upset. Eyes glazed over, glasses fogged up, he’s accused of overreacting. Four months after the competition, Vandaag Inside, a far-right Dutch talk show, mocked Klein’s history of mental illness, suggesting that the artist should be institutionalized as anyone who viewed Eurovision as a trauma must be unwell. A reporter from The Guardian mentioned that Klein was “allowing himself to be dragged back, and [they’re] not sure how much he wants to move on.” Expected to leave the past in the past, Klein is berated for outlining the aboutness of his album.
Recognizing that Eurotrash can be art legitimizes both the art and the artist, renegotiating the standards of criticism. Klein had sought to reclaim the trauma associated with his disqualification, had threaded memoir throughout Unity to process his emotions. Refusing to see the merit in his work, Klein’s critics only engaged with the most marketable fragments.
**
The unspoken parts of an essay are just as important as the parts that are outlined. We learn about a speaker through what’s said and unsaid, what they prioritize and what they leave out, where they pause or stop. In the maximalism of a gabberpop performance, whitespace is a fleeting second between flashing images, a moment when the speaker disappears.
Klein’s performances utilize this sense of absence efficiently. In New York, Klein dons the stark blue suit for the first time in months, vibrates across the stage to his own beat. Nearly a year after his disqualification, he begins where Eurovision ended, synth rising into the first notes of “Europapa.” The screen behind him oscillates between flashes of bright light, the reflection of the artist as a man, and black and white images of a massive bug, looming behind the artist as shadow. Eurovision had forced him to change himself, to hide his tattoos, to make his music more acceptable for a broader audience, cutting through gabberpop’s dense layers to reach something lighter. Behind the artist resides the insect, easily 20 feet tall. From the floor, I can’t help but see something almost Kafkaesque about the silhouette. Klein, who was suddenly changed into something else, who had tried to explain his actions but was silenced, who was forced to stay in his room after his nonconsensual transformation. Slid between gabber kick beats, the image feels akin to a tactile sample: an artifact that only holds meaning when analyzed by the listener.
Halfway through the concert, the artist abandons the stage, running to change. The show continues without him. The screen rotates through several pre-recorded clips of Klein and his clique laughing, dancing, before settling on a black and white film of Klein standing shirtless in the shower. Angle pointing down from above, the camera focuses on his face, his shoulders. Protected by projection, the artist smiles, hands scrubbing his cheeks. The grimy beat, run through, modulated, becomes clean. The crowd screams, Klein’s bare skin glowing white. His eyes glance towards the camera. Smug, he knows what his audience wants of him. The crowd begs for the lens to slide down, pleads for more skin. Klein laughs. They’ll take what they’re given. In this video, his flesh is only clean.
**
Creative nonfiction is elastic. Memoir stretches to accommodate new mediums, new structures. The speaker, as if a contortionist, folds themselves into the form, uses its shape to contain themselves. Some of these shapes won’t fit every viewer. Some of Klein’s art isn’t made for me. Some I’d argue is bad, but bad art is still art. The form still contains some acknowledgement of a greater emotional truth, still holds some emotional resonance. If paint on canvas will always be considered art, why should language be any different?
In Klein’s work, I’m most compelled by his intentionality and sincerity. The albums Fryslân and Unity are shockingly honest. Track after track, he lays himself bare, bringing different pieces of himself to the surface. His integration of samples, a standard within the gabber genre, brings a level of intertextuality to his discography. Klein braids memoir with excerpts from other works to create hybrid pieces. His songs carry the honesty of an essay and bear the weight of his emotional truth.
I primarily see myself as a lyric essayist. I think through associations, connect different ideas to one another through scrappy collage. I see everything as existing within its own context but feel uncomfortable being direct. I believe a key part of art is its consumption, that emotional resonance can only be derived if the viewer participates, analyzes. Still, I often find myself shying away from pure, straight memoir. When I appear on the page, it’s almost always in conversation with research, most frequently distanced with the vagueness inherent to lyric pieces.
Being able to see the other ways that creative nonfiction can operate genuinely excites me. When we think about genre as a container instead of a limit, more creative opportunities present themselves. In an undergraduate creative writing class I taught, I made my students do an exercise with Klein’s “Florida 2009,” a song that reflects on the loss of his parents. We listened to it three times – once in Dutch to a black screen, then in Dutch with the music video, and finally in Dutch with the music video and English captions – to think about the different atmospheres each evoke. We discussed the different textures of narrative that can be achieved through language alone, how it interacts with tone, images, and prose, to become an essay.
Listening to more textured music, maximalist songs tiered with layers, has made me more cognizant of layering in my own work. I’ve found myself writing shorter braids and including more of them, throwing images and samples from other works at the reader to create a more multifaceted aboutness. I’ve become more comfortable writing in ekphrasis, viewing it more as an act of translation as opposed to a simplification. While my writing has always been intertextual, I’m craving more texts, more ways of seeing the same thing.
Euro-trash keeps me centered in this. All art exists in conversation, all work cast in the imprint of what came before.
