Jens Lekman announces forthcoming album, Songs For Other People’s Weddings

2 days ago 4

Songs For Other People's Weddings is a work of fiction about J, an unlucky-in-love musician who moonlights as a wedding singer. J gathers with couples before their big day to learn more about the intimate, strange things that brought them together, in order to write an original song to perform for them at their wedding. But despite J's penchant for finding the perfect words for others, he can't seem to do the same for his own love with his girlfriend, V. "‘Candy From a Stranger’ is the point in the story where the lovers meet for the first time, or do they?" Lekman notes.

"The idea to make a narrative concept album (a rock opera?) felt forbidden. Which, for me, is usually a sign that I'm on the right path. While investigating the genre of narrative concept albums, I realized that one of my all-time favorite albums, Frank Sinatra's Watertown, was in fact just that– a record that told a chronological story over the length of an LP. Having never been a fan of musicals or rock operas, this album served as inspiration," he adds.

Songs For Other People’s Weddings is a companion album to a book of the same name by Lekman & award-winning, bestselling author David Levithan. The project was inspired by the Swedish artist's side career as a wedding singer, which came about by chance after fans took his 2004 song "If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding)" literally and invited him to perform at their nuptials.

"I wrote the album while the book was still being written and, at some points, I started imagining what happened between the book's chapters. The book and the album eventually became intertwined but also found their own paths. The book provided the structure of the story, but the album sometimes snuck behind the scenes. Stories from the songs made their way into the book and vice versa," he explains.

Tracklist: