Jens Lekman
Christmas music is usually more concentrated pop music in a way. It's meant to make us feel good, and it's meant to make us like we belong somewhere.Collection: Christmas
Goteborg used to be a not very cool place to live. The culture centered around shrimp and bingo. Bands played Copenhagen and Stockholm and skipped Goteborg.Collection: Cool
Every wedding is slightly different from the other. But you always get to meet the funny uncle and the weirdo relatives, and there's always someone trying to beat you up for not playing enough Beatles songs or something.Collection: Wedding
I still love touring rock clubs around the world, and that's something that's really a part of me. I love making albums, and I'm a wedding singer on the side; that's my parallel career. So I love all those aspects of making music.Collection: Wedding
I started running to different albums, and I was starting with the short albums and moving on to the longer albums. I was interested in how they built up, in tempo and intensity. it made me interested in albums again, too.Collection: Moving
I went to Legoland in Denmark when I was five, I think, but I went to Germany when I was 17 to have a little adventure after graduation.Collection: Graduation
Sometimes you have to burn yourself to the ground before you can rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
The idea of printing out something that's as scary as a tumor into its concrete form was something that spoke to me - there is something very liberating about that idea.
When you're writing about difficult things and darker issues, it's nice to offer some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. Some sense of hope. Sometimes, the best way to do that is by offering it in the music, so that you can dance your way out of the darkness.
Nirvana was a band that led you somewhere, as opposed to all the grunge bands that began and ended with themselves.
I'm very very happy for my hardships and misfortunes: they build character and make you a better person. Even if I think it's something you have to carry with you, it's definitely something that makes you more empathic towards other people, makes you understand people and relationships so much better.
I don't like irony and sarcasm very much. But I do like it when you think someone is telling you a joke, and then you discover it's serious.
I grew up in the '90s and remember the lyrics back then were so abstract and open to interpretation. That always drove me crazy.
My aim is for every song to have a purpose - for you to be able to say, 'This song is about this.' But love and heartbreak are some of the most abstract subjects.
If you come to the conclusion that there is no conclusion, well, that's a conclusion, too.
This is one of the reasons I'm so interested in stories. Because everyone has a story in their life, and when their story doesn't make sense, that's when we get depressed, I think.
I feel like the few times in my life when I really felt like I love my own story is when I've been the happiest.
I find it quite hard to connect with the songs where I portray myself as this clumsy, adorable, love-struck man-child.
You always try different versions of yourself through songwriting. It can get a bit annoying to see them walk around and do their thing when you feel like, 'I'm not that person any more.'
I struggled with a lot of doubts around my songwriting and around what I was and what my purpose and mission were.
For me, it's sort of like a cultural democracy or musical socialism to take a stand and get out of the major cities if you can.
I would love to hear Marilyn Manson's fans or something, what their stories would be like.
I've never felt at home in Kortedala, or in Gothenburg, so I always felt like I needed to go somewhere and find some kind of perspective on things.
I was in my early 30s, and I longed for real friendships and real relationships, and I started asking myself why I didn't have that. I had a couple of male friends, but every time I would hang out with them, it felt like there was something keeping us apart.
Even if I wrote a song about math or animals or whatever, there would still be the question, 'Why did you write about that? And what does it say about you?'
I've established a certain voice over my albums. It can be an obstacle, but in the end, I think it's a strength, because I can build upon that voice, which is ultimately very much mine.
You carry all these hurts and breakups with you forever. But there is this sort of joyful realization that the things that caused you pain were real. There is something beautiful and invigorating in holding onto that.
My first single was based around the mishearing of the words 'make believe' - 'I thought she said maple leaves.' That kind of stuff is very central to my music and my life.
I became paranoid for a long time: I thought that people were out to harm me.
A lot of my songs are written prophetically: I write something, and then I make it happen.
I have mood swings, but I'm sure people in England have that, too. Me and my friends, we're just a bunch of happy idiots.
I like telling stories with a sense of humor. But humor can also distance you from the subject you're writing about. I'm interested in using humor as a portal to something a bit more serious.
Any band that doesn't have a sense of humor has a little bit of a problem.
I have this part in myself that sometimes gets me into situations that can never end well, just because I want to prove to myself that I'm no good.
The way to write really good songs is to write about the things that happen in your life and where you are in the moment, and writing about stuff that happens in your 30s is not the sexiest song subject.
It was never part of how I imagined my music, and I watched in awe at how this ukulele troubadour image suddenly devoured the Jens Lekman I had planned so carefully.
If there's two things I will never do, it would be grow a beard and pick up the uke again.
What I can't fit into my suitcase is probably something I don't need.
I think sometimes when I sit down to write a song, it doesn't come out naturally, but when you are writing an email to someone, especially if you are writing to a stranger, you write much more spontaneously, and it's freer.
A lot of people would write to me long stories from their lives, and I felt they were thinking of me as some sort of treasure chest to keep their secrets. I felt like sometimes they would tell me stories they wouldn't tell anybody else in the whole world. And I loved these stories.
I think when you get into your 30s, you start to realize all of the patterns you have in your life and all of the stuff that you're avoiding. It's a terribly unsung period in people's lives. I can't think about many artists who have sung about it, because it's so not sexy.
I realized that even though I had this urge, this longing, to write about other people, in order for it to be emotionally gripping, I needed to be in there somehow.
I've always been interested in listening to people's stories.
It always feel like people are doing more grown-up things than you are.
I feel like it's my responsibility not to leave the listener in a pool of dread.
I think all the best songs do that: they offer some sort of hope and light in the darkness.
I wouldn't write about something that I haven't experienced myself.
I think it's because Toronto is the Gothenburg of Canada, with the trends and the music and everything. I feel very at home when I'm there. Everyone has always been so kind to me.
I had a drummer in my band who started teaching me tricks to come up with interesting rhythms. Because I don't come from a musical background, I've never studied music, and I don't know music theory at all, so a lot of stuff I discover on my own are things students would learn in the first grade of music.
Contemporary Swedish artists that chose Swedish as their language tended to sing about certain topics and use words I wanted to avoid.