Birth of a New Age

On 4 March 2021 Macrooy and the broadcaster AVROTROS announced via a livestream that Birth of a New Age would be the Dutch entry of the Eurovision Songfestival. The next day the official music video was presented. The recordings were shot in the Rijksmuseum, in the Tropenmuseum and in the Koepelkerk (Ronde Lutherse Kerk) in Amsterdam, under the direction of Kevin Osepa and cinematography of Jasper Wolf. == Composition ==

The genre of Birth of a New Age is soul combined with percussion and the exchange of call and response from kawina, a genre that originated in Suriname, Macrooy's birth country. The choir consists of sixty voices that were recorded by three singers: Jeangu Macrooy, his twin brother Xillan Macrooy and singer Milaisa Breeveld. In addition, the voice of fellow composer Pieter Perquin can be heard at the beginning of the song. The basis of the song was from Macrooy, who finished it on 17 December 2020. He worked further on it with Pieter Perquin. While composing, Macrooy and Perquin did not begin with a defined song structure like verse-refrain-verse-refrain-bridge-refrain; instead, they built it piece by piece, and tried out new elements when they popped up. With the choir at the beginning of the song, it therefore looks like the song has two refrains and an ending of its own. == Lyrics ==

Macrooy had already written a poem that would become the song's lyrics before he started with Perquin to work out the music. According to Macrooy, this poem would not have existed if the developments in 2020 around Black Lives Matter had not occurred. Those gave him the feeling that the struggle of sixty years ago had not been lost. The demonstrations meant a lot to him. Being there at a demonstration, it inspired him that he did not only see black people around him, and that he saw a lot of young people there. "In fact that is the new age I am singing about," said the singer. == Mural ==

As a part of the artist project #UPStreetRotterdam visual artist Tymon de Laat completed his artwork with the title Birth of a New Age on 19 April 2021. He made a mural near Ahoy Rotterdam and signed it in the presence of Macrooy, in a joint action at an aerial work platform. == Eurovision Song Contest ==

Internal selection On 18 March 2020, directly after the cancellation of the Eurovision Song Contest 2020, the national broadcaster AVROTROS announced its intent to again host the Eurovision Song Contest 2021, and to keep Macrooy as the nation's representative for the event. At Eurovision As the host country, the Netherlands automatically qualified to compete in the final. It was the 23rd performance in the final on 22 May 2021. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021 edition of the festival was held with a small test audience, called "field lab". ==Charts==