He also had an international airplay hit when DJ Armin van Buuren remixed VanVelzen's song "Broken Tonight".

He went on to study Creative Communications at the Inholland College of Applied Sciences in Rotterdam, and won the Heineken Student Music Award in 1999 with his band The Goldfish.

He went on to play with Crazy Pianos and during a concert at the GelreDome, he met his current manager, Ruud H. Vinke.

In early 2005, VanVelzen was introduced to Dutch music producers Holger Schwedt, Nando Eweg and John Ewbank, and they decided to start working on an album.

Aside from his own tour, VanVelzen opened for various large acts throughout 2008, including Kelly Clarkson at the Heineken Music Hall and Bon Jovi at the Amsterdam ArenA, as well as several smaller festivals throughout the Netherlands.

Towards the end of 2008, several German radio stations began to pick up on VanVelzen's music, particularly "Baby Get Higher", which was used for a TV commercial and peaked at No.

In the autumn of 2009, DJ Armin van Buuren remixed and released "Broken Tonight", one of the songs from the new album, and the track became a hit in several countries outside of the Netherlands, including making No.

In November 2013, a new single "The Blessed Days" was released, as the title track to the Dutch romantic comedy movie Soof.

The video to the song is a re-make of Billy Ocean's "When the Going Gets Tough" and features the main characters of the movie, including choreographer Dan Karaty.