Jens Lekman Quotes

But once you've made a song and you put it out there, you don't own it anymore. The public own it. It's their song. It might be their song that they wake up to, or their song they have a shower to, or their song that they drive home to or their song they cry to, scream to, have babies to, have weddings to - like, it isn't your song anymore.

At the end of the day, I just like to make the best music that I can make and put it out to the world and see how they respond to it.

The video forum for me has been a source of great consternation because once you start projecting a look to a song, it robs the listener of their ability to adopt that song and make the lyric their own.

I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it's no longer his... I just see what people make of it.

I hardly ever listen to any of our old stuff now. Once the songs have been recorded and put on to vinyl they become someone else's entertainment, not mine.

Just like any songwriter, I love it when people sing my songs.

It's a different process for me, but it's really cool to hear someone else singing the song that you wrote.

I believe that once I put music out, it's owned by the listener.

At this very early stage in my career, I want people to experience the music first and let it drive their imagination and their experiences.

You put a piece of music out, and it's not in your hands anymore, and that's cool with me.

You don't necessarily have to write a song to make it your own. After all, Elvis never wrote a song in his life.

I try not to take on the weight or the burden of it. Once it's on the paper, I try to leave it, because I want to surrender to what I'm supposed to write about.

The way I see it, as soon as I make a piece I’ve lost control of it.

When you work on an album for three and a half years, you're kind of ready for it to get out there. To have your songs reach people.

I can relate to soul, R&B... whatever people want to call me is fine. I just hope it makes them feel something.

It was a privilege to direct the music video for Adele's beautiful, heartbreaking song, 'Hello.' When I first heard it, all the images appeared clearly in my head - and her trust and generosity allowed me to work with abandon artistically and emotionally, like she always does. It made me extremely proud.

But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.

We simply write the kind of music we enjoy most and hope that our audience will enjoy it too.

People take songs so literally.

Being able to take musical ideas through every iteration is attractive to me. Granted, not everyone's going to want to listen to that, but it should exist.

When I write, I don't have any expectation of what kind of song it will become or who it might reach.

Musicians own music because music owns them.

The cool thing about music is no one can take music away from you, writing wise.

I write music people enjoy playing and listening to, and I have a group that loves playing the music.

Acting is such a personal thing, which is weird because at the same time it's not. It's for the consumption of other people. But in terms of creative outlets and expressing yourself, it's just the most extreme version of that that I've ever found. It's like running, it's exertion.