It might sound strange that an artist with only two albums is putting out a compilation, but Vandenbroeck is striking while the iron’s hot: his single from last year, “Ayo Technology”, has already topped the charts in six European countries and just went gold in Germany. You’ll find it on the album Milow.

A reworking of a song by American rapper 50 Cent, “Ayo Technology”, involves a fantasy about a lap dancer and has some pretty sexually explicit lyrics – a far cry from Vandenbroeck’s own songs about coming to terms with life. He took some time out from his tour of sell-out concerts to tell me all about it.

“My mother only realised the song was about sex when she saw the video,” Vandenbroeck confides. “I was actually not sure how my mum would respond. She liked the song – but she wasn’t really listening that closely,” he laughs.

In fact, nobody has taken Vandenbroeck up on the political correctness of the song’s lyrics. “It still freaks me out, this song, that someone is watching a girl and wants to take her home and do – um, yeah, whatever, I don’t know,” the 27-year-old says. “Younger people know that 50 Cent and other rappers are singing about explicit sex. But I’m not really sure that most people in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany actually understand what I’m singing about. In Belgium, I’ve sung it on live television.”

He was even asked to sing it on a children’s television programme, but his sense of propriety overtook him. “I had to say no to that,” he smiles.

But for Vandenbroeck, the song is satire. “Every time I sing it, I almost start laughing,” he explains. “But it’s also about loneliness; there’s a bit of melancholy in there. I like that it’s a little bit confusing.”

But how did a young man who writes lyrics that Humo once described as “too pretty and too polite” come to record such a song? “It started as a joke,” he admits. “I did it for a radio station in the Netherlands over a year ago. My album was about to come out, and I was doing interviews. They asked for a cool, alternative version of a song. I was looking for a song that was a complete opposite of my own style. I can’t really explain, but I had heard ‘Ayo Technolog’ once and thought it had a great melody, that there was another song hidden in it somewhere.”

So he sat down with his guitar and gave himself 30 minutes to see if it would work. “I changed the structure and came up with a new vocal melody so I could sing the rap. I had a lot of fun doing it.”

Not only did he never expect the song to go gold anywhere, he never even intended to release it. “But the reaction was so good, I recorded it for a compilation. When we finished, I had such a good feeling about the recording that finally we released it.”

Last year, “Ayo Technology” spent two weeks at number one in the Belgian Top 50 and four weeks at number one in the Dutch Top 40. This week, it’s in the top five in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and the top 10 in Sweden. The video has passed the 10 million viewer mark on YouTube.

Vandenbroeck isn’t perturbed that his first big European hit is not his own work. “People are starting to ask, ‘is it a blessing or a curse?’ You need a single that brings people to your concert, so I think it’s a blessing.”

Rappers aside

Vandenbroeck’s real influences are rooted in classic and indie American rock. “Growing up in the 1990s I was listening to Radiohead, Nirvana, Bruce Springsteen. It was only when I was 18 and started listening to Ryan Adams [not to be confused with the Canadian Bryan Adams, he notes] that I started to go to the back catalogue of Bob Dylan and Neil Young and singer-songwriters of the 70s.”

At this point, his musical interests have expanded greatly, although he still feels “most at home” with traditional singer-songwriter stylings, like those of Americans Steve Vai and Ray LaMontagne. They’ve inspired him to write narrative songs that tell stories. In last year’s album Coming of Age, all the characters are at different stages of growing up. They include an 11-year-old boy, a 68-year-old priest and a 21-year-old cancer patient.

“Most of the time, I have a melody in my head, which is enough to start,” he explains. “I know the title; I know the theme; I know how I want to start the song, and where I want to go. In my last album, the most important verse is always the last one.”

Though mostly fiction, two songs from his 2006 debut album The Bigger Picture reflect on his own passage into adulthood. “There’s a 20-year-old Milow in ‘You don’t know’ and me being 23 in ‘Born in the Eighties’. When I write a song, I really like to hold a camera up to life,” he says.

Generation Control

Vandenbroeck was born in 1981, growing up in the 1990s. “I feel like there are not really songs written about us,” he says. “I was looking at my friends of my age and wondering what is it that really defines us as a generation? The only thing I could come up with was control. We want to have everything under control.”

He admits that the same is true for him. “Four years ago, no one in Belgium wanted to release my records. So I started my own little label, Homerun Records. A little irony since I was far from a homerun then.”

Vandenbroeck still doesn’t have a manager, and he still releases his own albums. “I negotiate my own record deals, and I’m about to start negotiating in London. I’m obviously a control freak,” he says. “It’s also a matter of pride and independence. I have total artistic control over every aspect of Milow and never have someone telling me what to do.”

He’s planning his next studio album for 2011. “It’s already taking shape in my head. The growing up thing is getting a bit old, I’ve done that now. I’ve tried to write about true, non-fiction events – that’s something I might try further. I would not object to writing about politics – but I would do it in a subtle way.”

Vandenbroeck feels let down by Belgian politics. “The least talented generation of politicians is actually in charge right now – the least talented in a very long time,” he states. “I hope that at one point people will notice that.”

With the rest of Europe looking outwards, Belgium, he feels, should be doing the same. “You have to make compromises, but they are getting so populist. When we are making steps towards internationalising and thinking about a bigger Europe, I think it’s narrow minded to talk about ‘typical Flemish’. I’m really sick of it. I think it’s boring and a waste of time.”

Living in America for a year when he was 18 brought this home to the Leuven-born Vandenbroeck. “I don’t feel Flemish. I feel European, continental European,” he says. “Ok, there’s something typically Belgian about my views, but nothing typically Flemish. What’s so great about being Flemish? What’s great about Belgium is that there’s such a mix of everything.”

Milow on tour

17 May, Vooruit, Ghent

www.vooruit.be

19 May, de Roma, Antwerp

www.deroma.be

20 May, Ancienne Belgique, Brussels

SOLD OUT