Doe Maar (the band name can be loosely translated as 'go ahead' or 'do as you say') recorded five studio albums, with the latter four hitting number one in the Dutch album charts.
Having emerged from a hippie community in the south of The Netherlands in the late 1970s, Doe Maar's self-titled 1979 début album was not much of a success. Founding member and original bass player Piet Dekker left the group. Ernst Jansz (vocals, keyboards), Jan Hendriks (guitar) and Carel Copier (drums) were briefly joined by stand-in bass player Joost Belinfante (of hippie/folk outfit CCC Inc.) before Henny Vrienten was recruited as the permanent new bass player in 1980.
The second album, Skunk, was released in the summer of 1981, preceded by the lead single Sinds 1 Dag Of 2, which didn't enter the charts until radio DJ Frits Spits had pretty much singlehandedly changed the song title into the more catchy 32 Jaar ('32 Years'). Single and album were reasonably succesful, but not more than that. At the end of the year drummer Carel Copier was replaced by René van Collem, who was 20 years of age at the time, more than a decade younger than the rest of the band.
March 1982 saw the release of the album Doris Day en andere stukken and the lead single, Doris Day, which - almost overnight - sparked off 'Doe Maar-mania', a craze unequaled for a Dutch band in their home country, including hysterical and fainting teenage girls during live performances and a brief domination of teen fashion in The Netherlands, with the fluorescent 'phosphor green' and 'lollipop pink' trade mark colours of the Skunk album and a huge market of Doe Maar memorabilia: pins, badges, sweatbands and what not.
Doe Maar were now referred to as 'the Dutch Beatles': very different music, but similar (if not worse) madness.
The Doris Day album had only just disappeared from the top of the Dutch album charts when the two-year old Skunk album hit number. The stand-alone single De Bom ('The Bomb') topped the singles charts in November 1982. Typically, the band's young fans hardly seemed to understand what an apocalyptic song it was: "Work on your future... before the bomb drops."
The band members were shocked and not seldomly frightened or depressed by their sudden popularity. They were in their mid-thirties; the hordes of teenage girls that suddenly invaded their private lives were everything but their peers. Doe Maar wrote particularly gloomy songs about topics that you would expect to appeal to 'thirty-somethings' rather than teenagers. Jansz and Vrienten, in particular, received tons of love letters from teenage girls, but also death threats from Dutch Neo-Nazis. They needed bodyguards. Meanwhile, the Dutch music press dismissed Doe Maar as a teenybopper phenomenon: the band was first sneered at and later mostly ignored by Holland's music critics.
In May 1982 the band fired its youthful drummer, René van Collem. His successor, Jan Pijnenburg, was involved in car accident shortly after he was hired. Somewhat bizarrely, the band then hired René van Collem as a stand-in for another six months of live concerts. The definitive Doe Maar line-up was now complete: Ernst Jansz (vocals, keyboards), Henny Vrienten (vocals, bass), Jan Hendriks (guitar) and Jan Pijnenburg (drums). Years later, René van Collem would express his bitterness over the fact that Pijnenburg can be seen on almost all of the band's famous group pictures and is generally regarded as the Doe Maar drummer (especially after the 1999-2000 and 2008 reunions), in spite of the fact that the drum parts on the studio albums are almost exclusively Van Collem's work. He also played the lion's share of the band's live shows.
The particularly dark 4us ('Virus') album was released in March 1983 and immediately rocketed to number one, just like its lead single Pa ('Dad'), a rather bitter song about generation gaps. 'Doe Maar-mania' was now at its peak and (during live shows) frequently out of control. The band decided to stop doing interviews, announced complete radio silence and attempted to focus on their next album, but had to conclude that there was no more inspiration. Doe Maar had burned out.
The announcement that Doe Maar was going to call it quits caused grief beyond belief amongst a generation of Dutch teenage girls. The Dutch Kindertelefoon ('Kids Phone') had to deal with countless brokenhearted young girls who phoned in, not seldomly to announce their imminent suicides.
The band did two emotional 'farewell' shows in Den Bosch's Maaspoort hall on 14 April 1984. Since then, Henny Vrienten and Ernst Jansz have pursued successful solo careers, mostly in the context of music composition for television and cinema. The band members remained friends and continued to play together on private occasions.
After more than fifteen years of absence - in which their work was rehabilitated by a new generation of music critics - Doe Maar decided to re-unite for one final album: Klaar (which means as much as 'finished' or 'done') was released in 2000. A string of sixteen reunion concerts at Rotterdam's Ahoy sports palace was announced. 175,000 tickets were sold in an eyewink, in many cases to the teenage girls of the early eighties, now thirty-somethings.
In 2007 a theatre musical about the band's music toured the Netherlands and won several important theater awards. The success of 'Doe Maar - The Musical' was followed by another reunion show, at De Kuip football stadium in Rotterdam. 50,000 tickets sold out within the hour, three more concerts were added... and also sold out in no-time. In an interview on 20 June 2008, Henny Vrienten said: "This is no longer a 'reunion'. Doe Maar is back, for real." Doe Maar still performs regularly in The Netherlands, mostly at festivals.
Hetzelfde meisje
Doe Maar Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Dat altijd meezong op hetzelfde wijsje
Wat waren wij nog jong
Toen jij die woorden zong
Over rozen
Rozen
Ik voel me nu nog steeds dezelfde schooier
Toch ging het leven niet
Tot wanhoop en verdriet
Over rozen
Van er was, er is
En er is beslist
En er zal er toch wel ooit eens ergens zijn
Alles wat ik mis
Wat er nu niet is
Zal er toch wel ooit eens ergens zijn
Ik weet in elke vrouw schuilt nog dat meisje
Met in haar hoofd nog steeds hetzelfde wijsje
Een droom die ze bewaard
Al wordt ze 100 jaar
Over rozen
Van er was, er is
En er is beslist
En er zal er toch wel ooit eens ergens zijn
Alles wat ik mis
Wat er nu niet is
Zal er toch wel ooit eens ergens zijn
Van er was, er is
En er is beslist
En er zal er toch wel ooit eens ergens zijn
Alles wat ik mis
Wat er nu niet is
Zal er toch wel ooit eens ergens zijn
The lyrics to Doe Maar's song "Hetzelfde meisje" are about the passage of time and how people change, but also how certain things remain constant. The singer reminisces about a girl who used to sing along to the same song as him, but has since grown up and become more beautiful, while he remains the same "schooier" (rogue). He muses on how life doesn't always go smoothly, but ultimately, what he misses and longs for will eventually come to be. He reflects that every woman still has that same girl inside her, with the same dreams and hopes, and that ultimately, everything will work out in the end.
The lyrics capture a sense of nostalgia and reflection on the passing of time. The singer clearly remembers the girl from the past, but recognizes that they have both changed and grown since then. The repetition of the phrase "over rozen" (over roses) throughout the song creates a sense of continuity and underlying hopefulness, despite the acknowledgment of difficulties throughout life. The final verse is particularly powerful, as it suggests that despite the challenges of life, there is still a sense of youthful hope and possibility.
Line by Line Meaning
Jij bent allang niet meer hetzelfde meisje
You have changed so much, you are not the same girl anymore
Dat altijd meezong op hetzelfde wijsje
Who used to sing along the same tune
Wat waren wij nog jong
We were once very young
Toen jij die woorden zong
When you used to sing those words
Over rozen
About roses
Ik voel me nu nog steeds dezelfde schooier
I still feel like the same rascal
Maar de jaren maakten jou alleen maar mooier
But the years have only made you more beautiful
Toch ging het leven niet
Still, life didn't go
Tot wanhoop en verdriet
Without despair and sorrow
Over rozen
Over roses
Van er was, er is
Of what was, what is
En er is beslist
And what is certain
En er zal er toch wel ooit eens ergens zijn
There will surely be something somewhere at some point
Alles wat ik mis
Everything I miss
Wat er nu niet is
What is not here now
Zal er toch wel ooit eens ergens zijn
Will surely be somewhere at some point
Ik weet in elke vrouw schuilt nog dat meisje
I know that every woman still has that girl inside
Met in haar hoofd nog steeds hetzelfde wijsje
With the same tune still in her head
Een droom die ze bewaard
A dream that she keeps
Al wordt ze 100 jaar
Even when she is 100 years old
Over rozen
About roses
Contributed by Stella G. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Ingmar van der Bent
Ik heb hier veel herinneringen aan, want ik ben 18 en mijn ouders hebben de cd waar dit nummer op staat. Toch gek om te bedenken dat het alweer bijna 20 jaar geleden is dat die cd is gemaakt
ChieffMaster
Toen ik 7 was draaide me moeder dit altijd, En nu weet ik eindelijk hoe het heet. :)
Meijer cq Jansen music rap entertainments
ChieffMaster en wat het betekende haha.
Jeroen van Gent
Lekkerrrr !
halligalloi
ich liebe es!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
r00t 1010
gaaanz lange her war ich in Todtnau in Süd Deutschland in ein ferien wohnung mit mein Vater und zwei brüder und wir hatten dieses lied auch oft auf. Es gab ein Deutsche junge die es auch so liebte, hat 'over rozen' mit viel spass mit gesungen :)
Pax2021
Jij bent allang niet meer hetzelfde meisje, nee je bent nog mooier en leuker en aantrekkelijker dan ooit tevoren. oohh oohh over rozen. En dat na ruim 25 jaar