Category: K3

Karen Damen, Kristel Verbeke and Josje Huisman

3*2=0

For the few of you who are staying with me as I lead up to my post about Petula Clark on Paul O’Grady’s BBC TV show — because that really is what I’m doing, I promise — here’s more about K3 from Belgium.

As I once heard Elvis Costello describe his enjoyment and appreciation of ABBA, I think the best K3 songs are “sprinkled with magic pixie dust.” Studio 100 exported K3’s sound to Germany, with a group called Wir 3 — different women in place of Karen, Kathleen, and Kristel, but everything else looking and sounding the same as K3. Click here for some background.

The song they’re talking about is “Heyah Mama,” which dates back to when K3 was targeting an adult audience of on-the-make 20-something women. Indeed, their first video is downright risqué. By the time of the Wir 3 spin off, K3 had made the switch to catering to kids, so Wir 3 is comparably clean. The embedded YouTube videos on that Belgovision link above are broken, but I’ll fix that here. Note: The first video, with K3, isn’t for kids!

This answers my question about exporting the group and casting different women. Wir 3 just doesn’t click like K3 does. It doesn’t take long when first watching K3 for Karen Damen to stand out, and I don’t see anybody comparable to her, nor Kathleen or Kristel, for that matter, in Wir 3. So the formula doesn’t work the same elsewhere, and I guess it’s unlikely they’ll be transplanted to America; which is just as well, because we wouldn’t want to see the three K’s without their magic pixie dust. 😉

Just Another Mega Sunday

There’s a lot I want to post, including Hillary, and J.K. Rowling at Harvard this past week. As I write this I’m converting a video of Petula’s recent BBC TV appearance, which required a massive amount of editing to be put right from shaky source material.

But I want to say that I’ve been getting a lot of flak, mostly via e-mail, about the K3 posts. Sorry, but I’m just not going to back down on this! In fact, I’m going to push back even harder with another Flemish act for kids. Meet MEGA MINDY!

Somebody should tell Yvonne “Batgirl” Craig about this!

K*3=!

K3 from Belgium are Karen Damen, Kathleen Aerts and Kristel Verbeke. They started in the late 90’s, and they work with an outfit called Studio 100. They’re producing what I would call the Strauss Jr. waltzes of pop music.

I’m imagining myself as a Radio Disney executive, watching these videos of K3; one made in a studio, the other a live performance of the same song….

… and after watching these I would say, “Call Studio 100 and pay them whatever they want. We’ve got to have this.”

Disney would have to risk casting different women, because of the language barrier, although their English could be excellent, for all I know. I think the appeal of the three K’s themselves has much to do with their success in Belgium and the Netherlands, but Xuxa, considered a goddess in Brazil, failed terribly in her attempt to break into America with her broken English. The K3 sound is, however, so compelling to my ears that I’m surprised there hasn’t already been an attempt to import it to the US.

P.S. By the way, the song is called “Kusjesdag” — Flemish for “Kissing Day.” One and a half million YouTube viewers can’t be wrong!

Three From Three K’s

Coming up will be Petula Clark’s recent appearance on BBC TV, but a couple of posts ago I featured a British pop music video by Spiller (who apparently is Italian). A girl group that really pushes the bouncy boundaries of Euro Pop is called K3, from Belgium.

Their language is Flemish, a variant of Dutch, but there’s some French in the lyrics too. These ladies don’t act their age, and in fact they do songs and shows for kids, but I still like this stuff, especially the catchy first song, “Frans Liedje.” Perhaps that’s because years ago Xuxa conditioned me, and before her it was ABBA. More about Xuxa later.

Here’s “Frans Liedje” in stereo. This song annoys my twin sister, and it’s a brother’s lifetime duty to annoy his sisters!

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/JUN/FransLiedje.mp3]