An interview with Jens Lekman

[Welsh Rich]

Not sure if it's as good as ours ( http://thelineofbestfit.com/2007/08/15/an-...th-jens-lekman/ ) but he's still a great person to read about:

 

When Jens Lekman wanted to meet a girl called Julie' date=' there was only one way to go about it: write a song about her first. Maddy Costa meets a singer who lives his music

 

Friday September 28, 2007

The Guardian

 

Something you are about to read concerning Jens Lekman isn't true. Not because Lekman, a chart star back home in Sweden and an indie darling on both sides of the Atlantic, is prone to telling lies. In song and in person, he comes across as earnest and guileless, dissecting moments from his life with dry humour and disconcerting honesty. Diary entries that aren't transformed into lyrics are published in a section called Smalltalk on his website, an account of his ups and downs so intimate you almost feel guilty reading it.

No, if there's a fib somewhere here, it isn't of Lekman's telling. It's his irresistible invitation. "I'm encouraging journalists to make up stories," he says, his cherubic face beaming. "If you want to make something up, feel free." It's how he deals with the fact that, ever since he first came to attention in 2004, he's been surrounded by "misinterpretations and misquotes". Back then, people didn't even realise his name was Jens Lekman: a confused radio DJ thought it was Rocky Dennis, because Lekman had written a song about that character from the film Mask. More recently, while Lekman was touring in Europe, rumour spread that he was dead. "People thought that I had died in a motorcycle crash. That was more amusing to me than disturbing; I came home and people were like" - he stretches his arms in a huge embrace - "ohhh!"

He's come to love these odd stories. "My first single," he says, "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." But he hasn't always had this equanimity. There is a Smalltalk entry from November 2005 that documents his short-lived decision to give up music, unable to deal with the repercussions of being misquoted. "I became paranoid for a long time: I thought that people were out to harm me." This came to a head when "something that was going to be a relationship didn't happen, we broke up".

 

Which was particularly galling because at that stage Lekman had been without a girlfriend for four years. At 26, he's still waiting. "I haven't had a relationship for six years now. I've had stuff starting to happen but it's never worked. I don't worry about it, it's fine. I feel I'm looking for a home in more ways than one - I have to wait and find my home first."

 

His romantic loss is our gain, because Lekman is sure that "I can't write any kind of love songs or breaking-up songs when I'm in that state," and he is one of the great writers of love songs. Not conventional, slushy ones: his style is closer to that of Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, as deadpan as it is sentimental. "I got busted," he croons on You Are the Light, from his first album, "so I used my one phone call to dedicate a song to you on the radio." On his new album, Night Falls Over Kortedala, he is the hapless romantic lost in memories of past love, and celebrating the love of others - most winningly, of his lesbian friend Nina, in a commemoration of the day he posed as her boyfriend for her Catholic family.

 

His lyrics are autobiographical, but not always of the life Lekman actually has. "A lot of my songs are written prophetically: I write something and then I make it happen. I wrote the song Julie because I wanted to talk to her but didn't have the courage to do so. But then I was too embarrassed to perform it without having talked to her, so I had to. That's why I write songs, to force myself to do things." Either that, or to cheer himself up, to "convince myself things are better than they are".

 

It's telling that he has dubbed his home studio the Kortedala Beauty Centre: music is his way of making life more beautiful. Born to a "quite poor" family, Lekman grew up in a corner of Gothenburg that was "known as the worst place in Sweden: lots of crime, all the poor people and immigrants live out there". What it had going for it was "a community with a strong sense of being in it together". After two years on a housing waiting list in his early 20s, he was given "what is definitely considered the worst apartment in Gothenburg", a basement in Kortedala, "a tiny suburb with a lot of crime and no sense of belonging or community at all. My neighbours are crazy; dead animals show up outside my window all the time."

 

No wonder he wants to emigrate to Australia. Unfortunately, the immigration authorities have been alerted to his song Do You Remember the Riots?, which relates his involvement in a 2001 demonstration in Gothenburg that turned violent. "I wasn't throwing stones or anything," says Lekman. None the less, it may be some time before his application for a work visa is accepted. Even if he does leave Sweden, he's loth to perpetuate any misconceptions about his country. Particularly "the whole thing about us being depressed and suicidal: that's very tiresome. 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."

 

One thing he'll miss when he moves are his regular games of badminton with a friend from Gothenburg-based electronic band the Tough Alliance. "We discuss the future of pop while we play. It's great because we're from two different sides in music, and whoever wins the set wins the argument." Lekman takes the side of classic songwriting. "People are too obsessed with thinking that every new generation has to revolt against the last one. Things haven't changed much in the last 10 years and there's still so much good music coming out." Especially in Sweden, which he puts down to an increased confidence in his country's musicians. "There was a point six or seven years ago when bands in Sweden stopped looking to what was happening in Britain and the USA and started inspiring themselves." It irritates him when people tell him they like his music because it reminds them of 1980s British indie. "What I get most is Morrissey, which is weird because when I grew up Morrissey fans were the people who sneered at you when you walked by."

 

He's more influenced by the "silly songs" he remembers listening to as a teenager: "Songs like In the Summertime by Mungo Jerry, or You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon. They remind me of some kind of innocence, and they're much more important to me than 'serious songs' - you know, men with guitars. I want to write songs that people can dance to and smile to and be entertained by - I think of myself as an entertainer."

 

Part of being an entertainer is singing in English. "I grew up with a VCR as a babysitter, so English feels very natural for me. I've tried to sing in Swedish but it feels very unnatural." A linguistics student at university, he's now trying his hand at other languages (especially Finnish). That choice of degree is revealing: Lekman is fascinated by the ways people communicate. When he did day jobs, he tended to take phone-based work that allowed him to talk to people and hear their stories. As an entertainer, he's keen to communicate directly with his fans. He abandoned MySpace earlier this year as "dumb and meaningless"; instead, he tries to email personally everyone who contacts him. "I love chatting to people like that. It feels like part of my job. I'm like a little night-time psychologist."

 

Like many shy people, you wouldn't necessarily realise that Lekman is shy: he's so open on his website, so genial and chatty. For years, he says, "I was keeping things inside of me. Then when I discovered music and how to express myself, it just exploded." Initially he was furious that, after years of feeling misunderstood, he was still misrepresented; now, though, he's more sanguine. He jokes: "I should leave a note somewhere - for the person who's going to write my biography, just make it up. Make me look good, that's all." Whether he feels pretending he's in trouble with the Australian immigration authorities counts as making him look good, he doesn't say.[/quote']

[boywiththorninside]

Thanks for posting this. It doesn't get much better than Jens.

[boywiththorninside]

I just read both interviews. The Guardian lifted things straight from yours. Imitation/plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery.

[yermom]

Every time I see the title, "When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog," I giggle. I think it's insanely clever.