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A2

Hij is van mij

Kris Kross Amsterdam, Maan & Tabitha feat. Bizzey

Language
Dutch
Released
2018
Genre
nederpop
Level
A2
Difficulty score
579
Duration
3:34

How to study this song

“Hij is van mij” carries 14 Dutch words, 14 adjectives and 37 verb forms — 65 study entries in all, graded A2. Work through the glossary first: dag, doel and hart are the words you will lean on most. This one leans on its verbs: 37 distinct forms against 14 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.

The words of this song, in several languages

Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.

Vocabulary

NLENESITFRPTDE
dagdaydíagiornojourdiaTag
doelgoal, aimobjetivo, metaobiettivobut, objectifobjetivoZiel
hartheartcorazóncuorecœurcoraçãoHerz

This card holds 11 more words. You meet them when you play the song.

Adjectives

What this song teaches you

Level · A2

Vocabulary words
14
Adjectives
14
Word combos
6
Expressions
10
Verb forms
37
Quiz questions
35

More Dutch songs at this level

  • Ik leef niet meer voor jou — Marco Borsato (1996)A2+
  • Leef — André Hazes Jr. (2015)A2-
  • Stiekem — Maan ft. Goldband (2022)A2
  • Als het avond is — Suzan & Freek (2018)A2-

Background

About the song

«Hij is van mij» came out on 21 December 2018, released by Top Notch together with Spinnin’ Records, and within seven weeks it was the most popular song in the Netherlands. It is a four-way meeting between people who came from very different corners of Dutch music. Kris Kross Amsterdam is a production trio: the brothers Jordy and Sander Huisman started it in Amsterdam in 2011, Yuki Kempees joined in 2014, and the group signed to the dance label Spinnin’ Records in 2015, a year before their international breakthrough with «Sex», made with the American duo Cheat Codes. The name is a nod to Kris Kross, the American hip-hop duo of the early nineties. Maan is Maan de Steenwinkel, born in Utrecht in 1997, who won The Voice of Holland in 2016 and then, after a couple of small English-language hits, decided to sing in Dutch. Tabitha is Tabitha Foen-A-Foe, born in Leiden in 1992, who studied at the Pop Academy in Rotterdam, spent time in Los Angeles trying to build a career abroad, and came back to write for other Dutch artists. Bizzey is Leendert Roelandschap, a rapper from Amersfoort born in 1989, who in 2017 and 2018 had been behind some of the biggest Dutch hip-hop records of the moment.

The idea behind the song is older than any of them. It borrows its situation, loosely, from «The Boy Is Mine», the 1998 duet by Brandy and Monica in which two women discover they are in love with the same man and each is sure he loves her more. The Dutch version keeps that premise and sets it on a modern, warm pop-R&B production. The writing credits reflect the collaboration: the three members of Kris Kross Amsterdam, Maan, Tabitha, Bizzey, and the writers Bas van Daalen, Robin Francesco and Joren van der Voort. The structure is simple and theatrical. Each woman takes a turn to explain why the man belongs with her, and the choruses become a kind of polite duel in which neither of them gives an inch. The listener is never told who is right, and that is the joke: both are completely convinced.

Then the man himself speaks. Bizzey takes the third verse, and where the two singers are confident and a little defiant, his part is restless and evasive. He asks to be left in peace, insists he means what he says, admits that he finds it hard to put his feelings into words, and ends by repeating the claims of both women in turn, as if trying to keep everyone happy at once. It is the oldest comic device in the love-triangle story — the person in the middle has no idea how to get out — and it gives the record a lightness that keeps it from sounding like a real argument. His verse also contains the only strong language in the song, which is why the classroom material on this card leaves that part aside.

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NLENESITFRPTDE
allerbestevery bestel mejor de todosil migliore in assolutole meilleur de touso melhor de todosAllerbeste
alleenonly, alonesolo, solamentesolo, soltantoseulement, seulsó, apenasnur, allein
anderotherotroaltroautreoutroandere

This card holds 11 more adjectives. You meet them when you play the song.

Verb forms

NLENESITFRPTDE
kanI can, canpuedo, puedeposso, puòje peux, peutposso, podeich kann, kann
gevento givedardaredonnerdargeben
voelI feelme siento, sientomi sento, sentoje me senssinto-me, sintoich fühle
heefthastienehaatemhat
zoekI look forbuscocercoje chercheprocuroich suche
houI hold, I lovesujeto, quierotengo, amoje tiens, j’aimeseguro, gostoich halte, ich liebe

This card holds 31 more verb forms. You meet them when you play the song.

For a learner of Dutch, the song is a compact lesson in how the language talks about belonging and feeling. The title itself is the first point: Dutch does not need a possessive pronoun to say that something is yours; it uses the preposition van, literally «of», followed by the object form of the pronoun. Once a student has seen that pattern, a whole family of everyday sentences opens up. The verses add the verbs of emotion and knowledge — voelen, denken, weten, kennen, begrijpen, geloven — and show the difference between kennen, to know a person, and weten, to know a fact, which confuses almost every beginner. They also use horen bij, to belong with someone, and houden van, to love, two verbs that only make sense together with their preposition.

The song is equally useful for the grammar that sits underneath. There are comparatives made with -er (safer, longer, better), a superlative intensified with aller-, the very best, and several separable verbs of the kind that make Dutch word order so distinctive: the expression that says something does not matter is built on uitmaken, whose particle ends up at the end of the clause, and the order to look someone in the eyes splits aankijken in two. Just as important for listening, the singers use the reduced forms of spoken Dutch — the possessive shortened with an apostrophe, and the pronouns for him and he cut down to a single syllable. Learners who only know the written language often fail to recognise these forms at speed; this song repeats them often enough to make them familiar.

Did you know?

The week it reached number one, the Top 40 noted that all four acts were scoring their first chart-topper at the same time. For Kris Kross Amsterdam it was only their fourth hit; Maan and Bizzey each had six to their names by then.

Maan became the first winner of The Voice of Holland to reach number one in the Top 40. Earlier contestants of the show had topped the chart, but none of them had won their season.

Tabitha was the third Top 40 debutant in a row to reach number one with a first hit, after Davina Michelle and Ava Max. In 2019 she became the most-streamed female artist in the Netherlands, helped by this song and by «Moment», another collaboration with Kris Kross Amsterdam.

It pushed Ava Max’s «Sweet But Psycho» off the top of the chart. The same week, for the first time in a little over eleven years, four Dutch-language songs stood in the top ten at once: this one, Suzan & Freek’s «Als het avond is», Davina Michelle’s «Duurt te lang» and Nielson’s «IJskoud». The last time that had happened was on 15 December 2007.

The music video was filmed at Parc Broekhuizen, a country estate in the village of Leersum in the province of Utrecht.

The four artists performed the song live in the second live show of the ninth season of The Voice of Holland — a return to the programme that had launched Maan’s career.

Maan’s switch to Dutch, which made this song possible, followed her appearance on the television series Beste Zangers in 2017. The Top 40 has pointed out that her Voice coach, Marco Borsato, had made exactly the same move decades earlier, from Italian-language songs to Dutch ones.

The song later lived on in another record: the singer Emma Heesters used a sample of it in her song «Waar ga je heen».

Bizzey’s verse ends with a quick sports joke: he compares himself to the Belgian goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois to say that nothing gets past him.

Charts & streaming

The single reached number one in the Nederlandse Top 40 and stayed there for seven consecutive weeks, from 9 February to 29 March 2019. It was a first number one for every one of the four acts involved.

On the Single Top 100, the Dutch chart built from sales and streams, it spent five weeks at number one and later returned to the top for two more, seven weeks in all. It also reached number one on the Mega Top 50. In Flanders it did not enter the main Ultratop 50 and only reached the Ultratip, the bubbling-under list.

Its real weight shows in the year-end figures: it finished 2019 as number one on the annual Single Top 100, which means it was the most downloaded and streamed single in the Netherlands that year. It was certified platinum.

For the people involved, it opened the most successful stretch of their careers. Maan went on to become the most successful act ever to come out of The Voice of Holland, with sixteen Top 40 hits by the Top 40’s own count, seven of them in the top ten; this song is one of those seven. Tabitha ended 2019 as the most-streamed female artist in the country.