<\/p>\n
When Pommelien Thijs played five sold-out shows at Belgium\u2019s biggest arena recently, it was a sign that she had become one of her country\u2019s major pop stars.<\/p>\n
About 20,000 fans a night sang along to tracks like \u201cAtlas<\/a>,\u201d a catchy song that last year topped a major Belgian pop chart for 22 weeks. Some audience members held up bedsheets with messages to Thijs painted on them. Others paid a tattooist inside the arena to ink them with cherished lyrics.<\/p>\n Yet while the shows were the latest sign of Thijs\u2019s stardom in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium, her performances raised a question for some in Wallonia, the French-speaking southern part of the country: Who is<\/em> this woman?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As the run of gigs kicked off, the country\u2019s French-language public broadcaster published a two-minute explainer on Instagram<\/a> detailing Thijs\u2019s career for anyone confused. Thijs is an \u201cenormous star,\u201d it said \u2014 it\u2019s just that her voice has \u201cnot yet crossed the language barrier.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At a moment when music fans are increasingly listening to songs in languages other than their native tongues, such as Spanish tracks by Rosal\u00eda and Bad Bunny or Korean ones by K-pop groups, the way Thijs\u2019s success has split the Belgian public highlights how language can still be a dividing line in pop.<\/p>\n Nick De Leu, a music critic at the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, said that only two homegrown acts \u2014 the pop chanteuse Ang\u00e8le<\/a> and the electro hitmaker Stromae<\/a> \u2014 had recently achieved success in both parts of Belgium, and both artists sing in French.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Flanders and Wallonia have separate radio stations, charts and music festivals, de Leu said, and that makes it hard for acts to break through in both regions. Even Taylor Swift has been affected by the divide, he said, noting that her songs got far more airplay and streams in Flanders, which looks more toward American and British culture for inspiration, than the Walloon public does.<\/p>\n Thijs said in a recent video interview from her home in Antwerp that she found nothing unusual about being a star for one half of her language-divided country. \u201cIt is what it is,\u201d the 25-year-old said with a laugh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She is also finding growing success in the Netherlands and in November she has a show<\/a> at the 17,000-capacity Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. Thijs said she didn\u2019t feel any urge to compromise to gain more fans outside that Dutch-speaking world. \u201cIf that would mean completely flipping my language, I wouldn\u2019t know how to start,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In Belgium, some government bodies are making efforts to bridge the language divide. Since 2023, schoolchildren in French-language areas are required from about age 8 to learn a second language, and that has to be Dutch in Brussels and regions bordering Dutch-speaking areas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Still, most children will speak only one language at home, as Thijs did growing up in Kessel, a town near Antwerp.<\/p>\n The daughter of a mother who taught Dutch and an IT worker father, Thijs said her childhood was \u201cfilled with language,\u201d particularly poetry, as much as it was music.<\/p>\n As a child, she tasted small-scale celebrity early, appearing on Flemish children\u2019s TV as a reporter, but her breakthrough came when she starred in \u201c#LikeMe,\u201d a show reminiscent of \u201cGlee\u201d in which the high school student characters burst into song.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Along with the rest of the show\u2019s cast, Thijs said, she started playing gigs around Flanders, usually \u201cunder the church tower on the stages made out of beer crates.\u201d<\/p>\n It was an introduction to the music industry, but Thijs didn\u2019t start writing songs until she was asked to pen a track in English for a Christmas movie<\/a>. Afterward, her manager booked her into about 40 sessions with producers to try to help kick-start a solo career.<\/p>\n She found that process \u201chorrendous,\u201d she said, particularly when she was steered toward ballads or disco. It clicked only when she returned to her childhood love of poetry and wordplay and started jotting down ideas for her own lyrics in the Notes app on her phone.<\/p>\n Since then, she has written her debut album, 2023\u2019s \u201cPer Ongeluk\u201d (\u201cBy Accident\u201d) and last year\u2019s \u201cGedoe\u201d (\u201cHassle\u201d), a word that Dutch-speaking people use to describe inconveniences from major life-changing events to flat tires, and also an allusion to Samuel Beckett\u2019s play \u201cWaiting for Godot,\u201d one of Thijs\u2019s inspirations for the record.<\/p>\n In Belgium, critics raved about the Olivia Rodrigo-reminiscent rock of both albums, especially the lyrics. De Leu of De Standaard said Thijs had a gift for beautiful imagery, which she channeled into songs that capture the concerns of young listeners, particularly their fears of not living life to the fullest. \u201cIf you see one of her live shows, you\u2019ll notice fans cling to phrases like they\u2019re buoys in the sea,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Other critics have called her \u201cthe voice of a generation\u201d for addressing issues like soaring house prices<\/a> and climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thijs said she found such hyperbole a bit silly. \u201cI think we would have solved many problems if we were, like, \u2018Yes, we have found one voice to represent us, we all agree,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Plus, in Belgium, a voice like that can\u2019t speak in just one language, alone.<\/p>\n Thijs is making tentative steps to make her music more widely heard in the French-speaking part of the country. She is scheduled to play Ronqui\u00e8res, a pop music festival in Wallonia in August, and she said she was having French lessons and using the app Duolingo to work on her stage banter.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing I hope is I don\u2019t accidentally insult them in French,\u201d Thijs said. \u201cIf I don\u2019t do that, the rest will be nice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n