A Quote by Jens Lekman
I think of the Jens Lekman in the songs as a completely different person who's stealing my stories.
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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.
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.
Some of our songs are empowering, but I feel like more so than our music, it's who we are. We're four women who are completely different ethnicities, completely different body types, completely different walks of life and opinions.
To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.
When you have an American mother from the Midwest and an Egyptian father, you travel back and forth and see such completely different stories in the news about the exact same events. It makes you think, 'How is anybody able to understand or even have a dialogue when the basis of information is just so completely different?'
A nation that still needs to distinguish between stealing an election, and stealing a new pair of shoes, is not completely civilized yet.
I think the idea is that every time we perform Big Red Machine music it should be different somehow - like, different people, different songs maybe, definitely different versions of the songs.
I think I would love to do a role where I completely transform myself and look completely different, act completely different, and do some crazy, cool, action drama where I was undercover and saving the world.
What I'm trying to do is tell good stories through music. I think some of the best songs, the best country songs, are stories.
I think people are particularly interested to see who the real me is, but... different stories call for different approaches and you change based on the experience you want that person to have.
So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It's like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn't be human, wouldn't exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn't be the person I am.
It's the same as Keith Richards. People still ask him the same questions they asked him 30 years ago, even though he's a completely different person. And I'm a completely different person than I was 15 years ago.
You can change your body shape by permitting yourself to exercise and eat a healthy diet and so on - and we've heard miraculous stories of people who have lost hundreds of pounds, and they look like a completely different person - but that's not the norm for the average person, and a lot of times, people don't get that way in a healthy way.
I don't really like over-explaining the songs. Everyone constantly asks what the songs are about, and I think the thing is that the songs definitely all have stories in them; it's just nice to let people decide what they are. I think it's important that people hear it themselves rather than having me annotate it.
My first book came out again - the re-issue from 2001. I was rereading it to make sure that I didn't miss any mistakes, and I didn't know who had written some of these stories. I really didn't. I am a different person now. It's weird. I think if stories are good, they have to have a life of their own that's independent of the writer. I like to think of my characters out there in other peoples' heads. That's a nice thing to think about.
Somehow, when you think about yourself in old age, you think you're going to be this completely different person that you don't even recognize - because you can't imagine it, you know?
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