Jens Lekman returned with the new album “Songs for Other Peoples Weddings”, out on 12 September via Secretly Canadian and anticipated by the first single “Candy From a Stranger”.

After eight years of recording silence, Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman has announced the release of his new album “Songs For Other Peoples Weddings”, a concept revolving around the figure of an imaginary singer who performs at weddings. The album is inspired by the artist’s personal experience as a wedding singer, which he recounted in 2004 with the song “If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding)”. In addition to the album, the novel “Songs For Other People’s Weddings: A Novel”, co-written with author David Levithan, is also to be published.

Lekman describes the project as a musical narrative inspired by Frank Sinatra’s “Watertown”, emphasising how the writing of the album and the four-handed book with David Levithan influenced each other. The book provided the structure of the story, but the album sometimes ran behind the scenes. Some of the stories from the songs ended up in the book, and vice versa. The concept of the album follows J, a musician unlucky in love who performs at weddings. He meets couples before the ceremony to get to know their stories and write an original song for them. Despite his ability to translate the emotions of others into music, J struggles to express his feelings in his relationship with his fiancée V, played on the album by singer Matilda Sargren.

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