Sometimes you have to burn yourself to the ground before you can rise like a phoenix from the ashes.
Jens Lekman
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.
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 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.
Summer is always best through a window.
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.
What I can't fit into my suitcase is probably something I don't need.
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.
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.
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 think there are definitely a lot of subjects I don't share with people, but I'm not sure where that border is.
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.
I think, in a world of mouths, I want to be an ear.
I struggled with a lot of doubts around my songwriting and around what I was and what my purpose and mission were.
I've always been interested in listening to people's stories.
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.
It's not difficult getting into the charts in Sweden. It's a very different musical climate, and in a very good way, I think, because artists like Jose Gonzalez or The Knife can actually get on the charts.
I realize that 'Postcards' was like input, and 'Ghostwriting' was output. I had all these frustrations and feelings before I did those two projects. 'Postcards' was something that brought new life and creative inspiration into the record, while 'Ghostwriting' was relieving myself.
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.
Really, to me, a really good evening would be a comedian, followed by a band, followed by a really good DJ.
Older men in my family - back to my grandpa - were basically completely bald.
I wanted to write songs about other people because I was sick of myself, basically. I didn't like myself very much. 'Ghostwriting' became an outlet for that. And then I could get back to get Jens Lekman again.
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.
Nirvana was a band that led you somewhere, as opposed to all the grunge bands that began and ended with themselves.
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 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.
I'm not too fond of the typical Australian activities or culture. I'm not into surfing - that's what I'm trying to say.
If there's two things I will never do, it would be grow a beard and pick up the uke again.
My old songs used to take place in Gothenburg; then, when I lived in Melbourne, the songs just naturally took place more in Melbourne.
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.
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 think a lot of my anxieties and fears are things that are very abstract.
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.
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.
'Postcards' was just a way of slapping myself in the face and saying, 'You can do anything! Just go for it!'
Some very silly songs can have an almost melancholy feeling when you put it in a different perspective.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I grew up in the '90s and remember the lyrics back then were so abstract and open to interpretation. That always drove me crazy.
I actually have all these tapes, from when I was five, from when I was 10, and from when I was 15, that don't really have to do anything with each other, but they're sort of archeological in my musical history.
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.
