Top 66 Jens Lekman Quotes

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 realised that music controls me more than I control music. I had to write songs that were convincing me that things would get better.

Older men in my family – back to my grandpa – were basically completely bald.

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 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.

Really, to me, a really good evening would be a comedian, followed by a band, followed by a really good DJ.

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.

I think all the best songs do that: they offer some sort of hope and light in the darkness.

Sometimes you have to burn yourself to the ground before you can rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

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’ve always been interested in listening to people’s stories.

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.

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

There’s so much nostalgia for music from the past.

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.

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.

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.

I think there are definitely a lot of subjects I don’t share with people, but I’m not sure where that border is.

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.

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 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.

Nirvana was a band that led you somewhere, as opposed to all the grunge bands that began and ended with themselves.

Once I release a song, it’s not just about me or the people… I write about. They’re my stories, but they’re not really mine any more.

Some very silly songs can have an almost melancholy feeling when you put it in a different perspective.

When I was working on ‘Night Falls Over Kortedala,’ I was listening a lot to ‘Graceland,’ the Paul Simon record. I really got into the lyrics on that album. The opening line is so brilliant, the way he sets the scene.

I really do believe in clearing samples, and I believe that people should be compensated for them, but the laws are just so stupid.

I don’t want music to be a museum.

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.

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 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.

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 think, in a world of mouths, I want to be an ear.

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

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.

Ever since I started writing music, I’ve wanted to know what the songs are about and to be able to tell stories.

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.

I need to write a sitcom, but something with warmth, not one where the dad comes home and he’s treated like an idiot.

Any band that doesn’t have a sense of humor has a little bit of a problem.

I like short beards. Not a big fan of the bigger beards.

Making albums is a very lonely process sometimes. Sitting around working on songs, feeling the pressure.

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 think a lot of my anxieties and fears are things that are very abstract.

A lot of my songs are written prophetically: I write something, and then I make it happen.

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

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.

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.

Australia’s beautiful, but I’m not too into Australian culture.

I think of the Jens Lekman in the songs as a completely different person who’s stealing my stories.

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.

The ‘sent’ folder of my email program is really my biggest inspiration and my biggest source of lyrics. That’s where I go to pick up a lot of the lyrics that I’m writing.

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.

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.

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.

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 have a very nice voice.

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 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 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.

I wouldn’t write about something that I haven’t experienced myself.

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.

I really love the idea of stepping into another character and being able to sing maybe stuff that is not my thought and my own opinions, but be able to portray someone else and take a walk in their shoes for a while.

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.