A biography for Jens Lekmanhasn’t been written yet.
“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 grew up in the '90s and remember the lyrics back then were so abstract and open to interpretation. That always drove me crazy.”
“The whole thing with playing on a stage with mics and all that has always been kind of uncomfortable to me.”
“I've always been interested in listening to people's stories.”
“Making albums is a very lonely process sometimes. Sitting around working on songs, feeling the pressure.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Some very silly songs can have an almost melancholy feeling when you put it in a different perspective.”
“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 find it quite hard to connect with the songs where I portray myself as this clumsy, adorable, love-struck man-child.”
“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.”
“It's good to let go of control. That's probably something all artists and song writers will say at some point.”
“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.”
“It's weird talking about the album as a living being with its own thoughts and direction, especially if you're the one creating it.”
“I think, in a world of mouths, I want to be an ear.”
“It always feel like people are doing more grown-up things than you are.”
“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.”
“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 became paranoid for a long time: I thought that people were out to harm me.”
“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.”