Quotes from Jens Lekman

I love playing small towns, but in Sweden, it's sometimes a little bit weird, because all small towns are just so close to bigger cities that people are not as grateful when you show up as they are in Odessa, Texas.

I've started listening to music in a new way after I started running. When it comes to running, I really got into the idea of track listings that way, too.

I wanted to write songs about other people because I was sick of myself, basically. I didn't like myself very much. 'Ghostwriting' became an outlet for that. And then I could get back to get Jens Lekman again.

Some very silly songs can have an almost melancholy feeling when you put it in a different perspective.

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.

When I was a kid, I had a period in my life when I was eight or nine when I was so scared of dying that I wouldn't go out of our house for a whole year. I refused to step out of the door because I thought something would happen. I had all these compulsive thoughts or whatever, and my head was really messed up.

I have this part in myself that sometimes gets me into situations that can never end well, just because I want to prove to myself that I'm no good.

I love a lot of old disco because it's aerodynamic, smooth, and very seductive.

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.

A lot of people would write to me long stories from their lives, and I felt they were thinking of me as some sort of treasure chest to keep their secrets. I felt like sometimes they would tell me stories they wouldn't tell anybody else in the whole world. And I loved these stories.

I think it's because Toronto is the Gothenburg of Canada, with the trends and the music and everything. I feel very at home when I'm there. Everyone has always been so kind to me.

I remember when I grew up and Dad would take me to kindergarten in the morning, and you could smell the chips in the air from the factory nearby.

Sometimes you have to burn yourself to the ground before you can rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

I had a drummer in my band who started teaching me tricks to come up with interesting rhythms. Because I don't come from a musical background, I've never studied music, and I don't know music theory at all, so a lot of stuff I discover on my own are things students would learn in the first grade of music.

For me, it's sort of like a cultural democracy or musical socialism to take a stand and get out of the major cities if you can.

The idea of printing out something that's as scary as a tumor into its concrete form was something that spoke to me - there is something very liberating about that idea.

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.

One of the nice things about songwriting is you can be inspired by absolutely anything.

The 'sent' folder of my email program is really my biggest inspiration and my biggest source of lyrics. That's where I go to pick up a lot of the lyrics that I'm writing.

I think South Korea was one of the best shows I've ever done in my whole life. The people there were crazy. It was literally Beatlemania.

I'm not too fond of the typical Australian activities or culture. I'm not into surfing - that's what I'm trying to say.

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.

My songs don't deal with locations that specifically, even if there are very specific references to them in there; they're sort of just where stories happen, not the stories themselves.

I don't want music to be a museum.