“I hope you are proud and are proudly watching me from somewhere,” Joost begins. ‘I miss you. Forever your son.’
The singer also shares an old photo of him and his parents, who are an important inspiration for his hit Europapa. “I hope you can see me shine,” he captioned this photo. The same photo can also be seen on the screen behind him during his performance in the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest.
At the age of 10, Joost started his career in his attic room. As ‘EenhoornJoost’ he shared videos about his daily life on YouTube. Joost was just in seventh grade when his father died of cancer. Just a year later, his mother also died suddenly. He was just twelve years old and was taken care of by his older brother and sister.
Joost uses his energetic and special videos and music to cope with his difficult youth. Joost wrote the song ‘Europapa’ as an ode to his deceased parents. “’Europapa’ is a poem to them, that’s how I write things down. Sad music doesn’t have to be sad. I refer to in the text Papaoutai from Stromae. How many people don’t dance to that? As he asks, “Daddy, where are you?” Do you understand?”, he told Arjen Lubach when the song was announced.
