51 Shapes of Nits: The 45th shape is the cabin

The One Kiss

There’s not much kissing going on in Nits songs. This is all the more remarkable since kissing is quite a central theme in pop lyricism. In “The Ballroom of Romance”, a couple kissed before he was then sent off to some foreign shores. A sad-goodbye kiss probably, in a story that doesn’t seem to have a happy ending. And in “Love Locks” Henk Hofstede sings about lovers sealing their love locks with a kiss on the bridges of Europe. If you know of other Nits kisses, please let me know … there surely must be others …

But in the HENK song “Cabins”, all of a sudden a hopeful and cheerful kissing energy appears out of nowhere. The album is mostly filled with problematic “love stories”, but in “Cabins” on a trip away from home, Nits loosen the reins for one perky moment. Henk Hofstede is demanding a kiss no less. It all begins in a rather quiet manner, setting the scene of a little holiday abroad, the travelers with time on their hands, sailing away underneath the falling stars. In fact the whole song is just a climactic build-up to this one Nits kiss. In hindsight this moment thus acquires an even bigger stature: its prominence as perhaps “THE” Nits kiss song can’t be overstated . It’s just one of these very filmic Nits scenes that I can see before my eyes. I imagine a scene on a boat, it’s night time, the camera zooms in on the faces of two characters traveling, with a sense of anticipation, foreseeing a mutual attraction …

The subtly theatrical arrangement of the song is really one of a kind. There’s first of all one of these lovely Nits intro’s to the song that I love so much – like the one they had for “Nescio”, but which they sadly abandoned on more recent live performances, but URK still had it – which only Nits seem able to produce. It’s playful and joyous, but beautifully melodic at the same time, it’s a little cheeky and teasing with a slight suspense, but tender too; it’s one of these typical tiny Nits episodes that make their music so very special. They are taking their time – indeed – as they usually do, receptive to and welcoming anything that comes their way. Once more a song that is so alive in the moment. The music is all excitement and rapture, building up to the moment when the kiss will be granted. A funny musical enactment of the joy of falling in love: “Kiss me!”.

Only good vibrations in “Cabins”, no drama here, no Romeo-&-Juliet kiss! “It makes no difference what they say – Tomorrow we will sail away – It makes no difference where we are – Every night a falling star”: it’s all so romantic, the kiss on the boat on this wonderful wave of notes, shifting from the black sea into the cabin and back. It is young love of the young ones, a kiss inspired by youth and their love and appetite for life. They are out exploring the world; it is a love-of-life kiss of a young person in the newfound tradition of the “Bildung”-song by Nits, of a cultural and personal formation that runs through the entire Nits oeuvre. Discovering the world together plays a huge part in the Nits curriculum!

There’s no ending to the story – we don’t even know if the kiss happened at all – that is of no importance. It was all about the anticipation of the kiss. Or the excitement, the possibility of the kiss. An exclamation of happiness and desire! That’s all!

These songs that are a little crazy, exuberant, exhilarating and full of energy are not uncommon in the Nits repertoire. They showcase their self-confidence and the right they claimed for themselves to be everything they want to be. I’m thinking of songs like “The Red Dog”, “Chameleon Girl”, “Frog”, “Mountain Jan”, “Bike in Head”, “Port of Amsterdam”, … Nits’s lively spirit taking over, letting their playful selves shape the game of music. It is what they’ve always done.

The Nits kiss is different. The song with the kiss turned out to be a stayer; it is still one of their most loved songs and I can easily see why … What the protagonist of the song craves is a shared kiss of the joy of life, two people in love with each other and with life, in a jumping-up-and-down rhythm that is in no mood to stop any time soon. To this day the audience of Nits is still hooked on this joy that the musicians of Nits radiate.

Nits were biding their time, they were traveling … giving us a little preview of how they would continue on their musical journey … A kiss to the world, a kiss of life.

Joke Roelandt, November 2025