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.
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.
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 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 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 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.
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.
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 mood swings, but I'm sure people in England have that, too. Me and my friends, we're just a bunch of happy idiots.
My old songs used to take place in Gothenburg; then, when I lived in Melbourne, the songs just naturally took place more in Melbourne.
Older men in my family - back to my grandpa - were basically completely bald.
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.
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.
'Postcards' was just a way of slapping myself in the face and saying, 'You can do anything! Just go for it!'
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.
In the past, I used to rely on the randomness of working with samples, which was a good way because it threw you in a completely different direction. You just thought, 'What if I take this samba drum and combined it with an '80s synth line or something from this record?'
Getting my hair cut is just a very special moment for me. I don't know exactly why, but it's such an intimate, almost religious experience. I'm very careful with who gets to cut my hair.
I think when you get into your 30s, you start to realize all of the patterns you have in your life and all of the stuff that you're avoiding. It's a terribly unsung period in people's lives. I can't think about many artists who have sung about it, because it's so not sexy.
