Jens Lekman Quotes
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One of the nice things about songwriting is you can be inspired by absolutely anything.
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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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When it comes to heartbreaks and disappointments, I often have to be more or less done with them to be able to write about them. Then you might ask why I would write about them at all, but I think I owe it to the Jens of the past.
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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.
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A lot of my songs are written prophetically: I write something, and then I make it happen.
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I try and take it for what it is, and I'm very at peace with the fact that when I'm done with the songs, they don't belong to me anymore. They belong to the listeners.
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It's good to let go of control. That's probably something all artists and song writers will say at some point.
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I remember when I grew up and Dad would take me to kindergarten in the morning, and you could smell the chips in the air from the factory nearby.
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My songs don't deal with locations that specifically, even if there are very specific references to them in there; they're sort of just where stories happen, not the stories themselves.
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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.
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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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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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What I can't fit into my suitcase is probably something I don't need.
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I think of the Jens Lekman in the songs as a completely different person who's stealing my stories.
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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.
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I think a lot of my songs are very silly and very stupid, written to entertain people, but in the end, I always come to that last line, and I feel that I have to wrap this up with a bit of dignity and a little tear in the eye; otherwise, the joke would be on the characters in the song.
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I think that's a responsibility I have, to not leave the listener with complete dread or depressing, dark thoughts, but to leave a little door open so that you can dance your way out if you want to.
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When I was a kid, I had a period in my life when I was eight or nine when I was so scared of dying that I wouldn't go out of our house for a whole year. I refused to step out of the door because I thought something would happen. I had all these compulsive thoughts or whatever, and my head was really messed up.
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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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Ever since I started writing music, I've wanted to know what the songs are about and to be able to tell stories.
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I've always been interested in listening to people's stories.
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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.
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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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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.