VWO student Lena Slangen (18) had an ambitious goal with the profile paper that she created together with her friend Julia (17). As part of the joint project for the d’Oultremont College in Drunen, Lena wanted to make her own album and also ensure that a song from it was heard on the radio. If they succeeded, they would get an A. Lena’s musical dream came true on Tuesday morning.
“We had to do scientific research,” Lena explained on Tuesday morning in the radio program ‘WAKKER!’ on Omroep Brabant. “I did research with Julia into the components of music and the emotions involved. When we started this project, our main question was: can we, as two underage girls, manage to come up with, write and produce a top hit ourselves? to make.”
That question led to the album ‘Lena’s illusions’, which can be listened to from Friday on Spotify. The album is full of Dutch pop songs: sung and written by themselves. “Then our supervisor said: if this comes on the radio, a radio DJ will think it is good enough to play. Then it will be perfect, then you will have a ten.”
“That Lena will get there!”
Radio presenter Koen Wijn was curious and invited Lena and Julia to the studio in Son on Tuesday morning. He listened to Lena’s enthusiastic story and decided to play a song from her album in its entirety. He chose it up-tempo song ‘Vrijmibo’. Lena couldn’t help but beam when she heard herself on the radio: “Super cool, I thought it was super cool!”
Koen then asked listeners to let us know what they thought of the song via the Omroep Brabant app. The responses were overwhelming. “This sounds great!”, said one of the listeners. “Super, playful and energetic!”, someone else commented. “And can’t this go to the Eurovision Song Contest?”, another listener wondered. “I like this much better than Joost Klein’s, a great song!” Other responses included: ‘sounds good, keep it up!’ and ‘that Lena will get there’.
Lena beamed again hearing all these praises: “How sweet!”
“They did some fantastic research together.”
Then it was time to call teacher Mark van Kruijsbergen. He was – of course – also listening to Lena and Julia’s radio performance. “There are two very nice students of mine, who are working on a very nice profile project,” he said. And then immediately announce the grade for their paper. “I can’t ignore that, it really has to be a ten. They have done fantastic research together!”
Hearing her own song on the radio for the first time leaves Lena wanting more, as she said: “I have already finished a few lines. But… first my final year!”
In this video you can hear a fragment of the song:
