This week on the show, Jason P. Woodbury speaks with Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman. Woodbury has been listening to Jens for just about 20 years—introduced by the 2005 compilation, Oh You're So Silent Jens. Though the comp features songs ingeniously constructed using samples, it was Lekman’s voice that made Woodbury such a fan. Not just his deep, sonorous croon; we mean "voice" in the writing sense: Lekman has a signature ability to sound funny and sad at the same time, or wounded yet somehow simultaneously hopeful.
Jens has a new album out now called Songs for Other People’s Weddings, and it arrives complete with a novel of the same name co-written by David Levithan, who you may know from works like Boy Meets Boy, Wide Awake, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, The Lover’s Dictionary, and others. Taken together, the novel and the record represent a little bit of reality, and a little bit of fiction.
Lekman really has worked as a wedding singer for most of his career—his first album, 2004’s When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog even features a song called "If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding)." But Songs For Other People’s Weddings is not about Lekman’s life per se—it’s about love and loss, heartbreak and hope, and ultimately, about the way music plays us through our lives.
We're so pleased to have Jens join me for this conversation. We discuss the new album, when weddings indicate to him a sense of if a couple is going to make it or not, his thoughtful blog, and what it was like to re-record some of his classics albums after sample clearances were unable to be obtained. Join in for this conversation about love, music, and art on Transmissions.
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