Jens Lekman

Musician

1981-02-06

Quotes by Jens Lekman

• I love playing small towns, but in Sweden, it's sometimes a little bit weird, because all small towns are just so close to bigger cities that people are not as grateful when you show up as they are in Odessa, Texas.

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• One of the nice things about songwriting is you can be inspired by absolutely anything.

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• I think South Korea was one of the best shows I've ever done in my whole life. The people there were crazy. It was literally Beatlemania.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• I struggled with a lot of doubts around my songwriting and around what I was and what my purpose and mission were.

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• What I can't fit into my suitcase is probably something I don't need.

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• 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.

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• In the past, I used to rely on the randomness of working with samples, which was a good way because it threw you in a completely different direction. You just thought, 'What if I take this samba drum and combined it with an '80s synth line or something from this record?'

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• Contemporary Swedish artists that chose Swedish as their language tended to sing about certain topics and use words I wanted to avoid.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Hmm... at some point when I was making 'Postcards,' it struck me, what the underlying themes for the record would be. It would be about choices, fears and doubts, and it had an existentialist theme to it.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.'

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• 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.

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• I start writing songs first as an entertainer, and I like funny stories that wrap up with dignity.

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