Krezip

A Tilburg band and a televised Pinkpop set

Krezip began in Tilburg in 1997 as a school-age four-piece built around the Govaert sisters — Jacqueline on vocals and piano, Anne on guitar — alongside Annelies Kuijsters and bassist Joost van Haaren, with Thijs Romeijn settling in behind the drums. The Belgian band K's Choice was the early model. A self-released EP, Run Around, appeared in 1999, and Warner Music signed the group the following year.

The hinge was a song Jacqueline Govaert had written at seventeen after arguments with her mother. 'I Would Stay' came out on 16 June 2000, reached number one on the Dutch Top 40 and number two on the Single Top 100, finished as the third-biggest Dutch chart single of that year and still sits seventh among the decade's biggest on the Single Top 100. Its first mass audience arrived through a nationally televised Pinkpop set that summer, with Govaert aged eighteen. Conamus handed the band its Zilveren Harp the same year, an award for promising Dutch acts.

Govaert has since said she hesitated to play the song at all, and that its staying power came from how many listeners recognised themselves in it.

Two labels, four albums, one abrupt stop

The debut, Nothing Less, arrived in 2000 and eventually went platinum. Days Like This followed in 2002. The line-up then shifted: around 2003 and 2004, Bram van den Berg took over the drum stool from Romeijn and Jan Peter Hoekstra came in on guitar in place of Thomas Holthuis. Warner dropped the band, and Sony BMG picked them up.

What Are You Waiting For? appeared in 2005. Plug It In, in 2007, pushed the guitars aside for electronics and was certified gold; its single 'All My Life' reached number seven on the Dutch Top 40. It was the last record of the band's first run.

In 2008 Krezip announced they were stopping. The final show was on 27 June 2009 at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, and 'Sweet Goodbyes' — still the closing number at almost every Krezip show today — belongs to that period.

The reunion that turned into a second career

The return was announced on 29 January 2019 on the television programme De Wereld Draait Door, and the band played Pinkpop again that summer. Sweet High, released on 24 October 2019, reached number two in the Netherlands and re-established them as a current act rather than a nostalgia booking.

Any Day Now was announced on 24 January 2023 and released on 7 April that year, trailed by the single 'In the Water' and carrying 'Make It a Memory', a duet with Danny Vera that has stayed in the live set since.

Music For Máxima, out on 17 May 2024, is the odder entry: seven songs written specifically for the six-part Videoland drama series Máxima, which premiered on 20 April 2024 and drew on Marcia Luyten's biography of the Argentine-born Dutch queen. The lead single, 'Attention', came on 4 May 2024. Govaert said the makers brought the band in early, which let them write from inside the character rather than around her.

A drummer on loan to U2

In 2023 and 2024, Bram van den Berg sat in as U2's live drummer while Larry Mullen Jr recovered from surgery — a run that took in the band's Las Vegas residency. U2 described him as a force in his own right. Krezip carried on with Bram Hakkens, known from Kyteman and Waylon, covering club dates and festivals.

That episode fed back into the writing. 'Shot in the Dark', released in June 2025, is a straightforward pop-rock single about taking the next chance rather than dwelling on the last failure, and it now opens shows. A Dutch-language song, '2200 Weken', followed it into the set: a count of the weeks the six of them have spent together, and the piece reviewers single out as the evening's emotional centre. At Doornroosje in April 2026 the band said more new music was on the way.

Where they stand in October 2026

2025 was an anniversary year — 25 years since the Pinkpop performance that broke them — and they marked it by playing the festival again, then De Roma in Antwerp on 29 November and a sold-out Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on 6 December, with Danny Vera and Bente guesting.

Spring 2026 was a venue run on home ground: 013 in Tilburg on 22 March, TivoliVredenburg's Ronda hall on 29 March, De Oosterpoort in Groningen on 10 April, a sold-out Doornroosje in Nijmegen on 17 April, the Melkweg's Max room on 24 April and Het Depot in Leuven on 2 May. The summer was festivals — Oerrock, Zuiderpark in The Hague, Zwarte Cross, Glemmer Beach in Lemmer and Zomerterras in Vlaardingen on 28 August.

The next phase is the theatre tour, announced in March 2026 with tickets on sale from 18 March at 10:00 through krezip.nl. Eighteen shows across the Netherlands and Belgium open on 25 September 2026, taking in Rotterdam, Utrecht, Nijmegen, Venlo, Groningen, Hasselt, the Stadsschouwburg in Antwerp on 23 October, Parkstad Limburg Theaters in Heerlen on 31 October, the ATLAS Theater in Emmen on 6 November, the Hertog Jan Zaal at Muziekgebouw Eindhoven on 19 December, and TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht on 11 February 2027. It closes at Koninklijk Theater Carré in Amsterdam on 21 March 2027. Demand is holding: the €49.50 top rank for the Eindhoven date had already sold out ahead of the show.

The show as it runs now

Krezip currently run two quite different formats. The festival set is compressed and hit-led: at Zomerterras in Vlaardingen on 28 August 2026 they played from 22:45 to 23:45, thirteen songs, opening with 'Shot in the Dark' and ending on 'Plug It In & Turn Me On', 'Beautiful Ride' and 'Sweet Goodbyes', with Govaert alone at the piano for 'I Would Stay'.

The theatre show is the long version and the one the band talk about as a run through the whole catalogue — songs in reworked arrangements alternating with spoken passages about where they came from, and room for audience requests. A logged setlist from the 2025 theatre run went to 23 songs: nineteen in the main set, opening with 'Better', then an encore of 'I Would Stay', 'Beautiful Ride' and 'Sweet Goodbyes'.

The April 2026 Nijmegen date shows how the venue shows sit between the two. Jolene opened with a set of their own pop material and an animated frontwoman; Krezip came on around 21:15 after an intro built on a television theme and played roughly twenty songs, pulling 'Seventeen', 'Won't Cry' and 'Running From' out of the back catalogue alongside 'Attention' and '2200 Weken'. The reviewer's verdict was that this is a well-constructed show from a band with two decades of practice at it, with Govaert working the whole stage, and that the older songs are what tip the room over.