![]() ![]() He was making thoughtful, funny, romantic indie pop, weaving personal, sharply observed stories into a technicolor patchwork of samples that burst at the seams. "And I just got up at six in the morning every day, and I just sat by my computer and just recorded songs all day.In the early 2000s, Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman had just started to find his voice. "I lost my job around that time, and I was on the dole, and I just remember thinking, 'I'm going to really make the most of this,'" adds Lekman. "But back then, I was just, you know, an unwritten sheet of paper, and I could do whatever I wanted." "After a while, you have to struggle more to find new directions and something that's interesting," says Lekman. "It was just a moment to see myself from the outside and like what I saw and be proud of what I saw."Īs Lekman starts work on two brand-new albums, he's energized by what he's re-discovered in his early work. "Now when I look back on it, I just see a 21-year-old, you know, dealing with these emotions for the first time. "Working on these songs became like a dialogue between my 41-year-old self and my 21-year-old self," says Lekman. "These things that we think that we're going to understand as we get older, but as we get older, we realize that there's nothing to understand."įor self-critical Lekman, remaking these two albums became something unexpected: A labor of self-love. ![]() This is such a perfect portrait of love or heartbreak,'" says Lekman. "It's like I've been going around in circles, and then I came back to that, and I was like, 'Oh wait, hang on. "Looking back on Maple Leaves, I think I nailed it in that song," says Lekman. And the more he learns about love, the more you'd think he'd cringe at an old song like "Maple Leaves."īut when he picked it up again for this project: In the 20 years since, Lekman has actually experienced real romance, real heartbreak. "So a lot of those songs were like trying out different costumes." "I actually kind of used my songs, in a way, to push myself to go talk to girls," admits Lekman. " 'She said it was all make-believe, but I thought she said maple leaves.'"īut back then, when it came to love, 21-year-old Lekman didn't really know what he was talking about. "It's all about the misunderstandings of love," says Lekman. "Maple Leaves" has all of the hallmarks of an early Jens Lekman hit: Doomed romance, big emotions, and a bit of wordplay at its core. But over the next 15 years, the bill came due.Īs the legal pressure mounted, Lekman was unable to clear all of the samples on "Oh You're So Silent" and "Night Falls." And as a result, Lekman's label Secretly Canadian had to stop pressing the records and pull them from streaming services.Ĭover Stories Jens Lekman Will See Himself Now #I HATE MYSELF FOR LOVING YOU VEVO FREE#In that era of file-sharing and free love, some artists – including Lekman – were less than careful about getting permission to use samples, which can be a difficult, expensive process. "Hundreds and thousands of tiny little snippets of audio from this place and that place."įans and critics around the world couldn't get enough, and Lekman soon released two of his most acclaimed and successful albums: In 2005, "Oh You're So Silent Jens," and in 2007, "Night Falls Over Kortedala."īut then, as in every Jens Lekman story, there came a twist. "The way I learned to make music was by making collages with samples from records that I found at flea markets and other places," says Lekman. ![]() In the early 2000s, Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman had just started to find his voice. Ellika Henrikson/Courtesy of Chromatic PR ![]()
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