A Quote by Jens Lekman
I start writing songs first as an entertainer, and I like funny stories that wrap up with dignity.
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It's funny when you start writing an album and then recording - the songs begin to take on a spirit of their own. Once you start to perform it live, this happens even more so than in the studio. They really start to develop a personality that takes shape over time with the audience.
When I start writing, my unconscious, my conflicts, my thoughts all start to come up. So for me, writing is an exploration. I never know how my stories will end.
I want to be funny. When I first started writing, I didn't find my stories funny, but people kept saying they were. It kind of worried me; these are some pretty disturbing and sad pieces. Why do people think they're funny?
Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one.
I've been writing songs since I was like six or seven. I've been writing poetry and short stories and stuff, but my first serious, serious song, I wrote when I was fourteen.
I think a lot of my songs are very silly and very stupid, written to entertain people, but in the end, I always come to that last line, and I feel that I have to wrap this up with a bit of dignity and a little tear in the eye; otherwise, the joke would be on the characters in the song.
Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.
I have a funny sense of humor. If I was a comedian and I was up on stage, people would think that's funny, because I'm a funny comedian. I'm an entertainer.
You want songs to sound cohesive with the other songs on the record but when you first start writing you just want to write to tell the truth.
Yes, we could talk to you for days on end about all the bad first dates. Those are stories. Funny stories. Awkward stories. Stories we love to share, because by sharing them, we get something out of the hour or two we wasted on the wrong person. But that's all bad first dates are: short stories. Good first dates are more than short stories. They are first chapters. On a good first date, everything is springtime. And when a good first date becomes a relationship, the springtime lingers. Even after it's over, there can be springtime.
When people start writing songs for award shows, there's a very limited palette you can use. You end up not sounding like you. You end up sounding like somebody else. You end up getting what the record company thinks they can market.
I do like writing. When I was a little kid, I used to love writing funny, silly stories - and my mom would always encourage it. I don't know why I ever stopped!
There are still songs that I'm writing. I like to write. I like to take a long time to do my songs, not even the actual writing process, but conceptualizing, getting into the songs. That's why I stopped doing mixtapes.
I'm not interested in writing overtly autobiographical songs. I would rather explore interesting stories. I like the idea of the songs being evocative and distinctive, so I have in my mind the atmosphere that a film could evoke. I like to think of them existing in their own little world.
I think you find stories with fresh perspectives, and there can be a danger in the opposite way when you start getting too cynical and things just don't start seeming like stories, and things don't seem exciting anymore. It's like, 'Yep, this is my fourth caucus, and I know everybody and know everything and I am writing just to impress my friends.'
The first thing you start with when you're trying to write something funny is it has to - it really has to come to you first. I has to be an idea that you have that first makes you laugh, that strikes you as funny.
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