He once sang, ‘if you ever need a stranger to sing at your wedding … then I am your man’. Couples took him at his word. Now, he’s turned the experience into an album and novel
On a video call from his Gothenburg apartment, Jens Lekman is contemplating the 132 weddings at which he has performed. “When you play a normal show, everything follows a schedule. At a wedding, you never know if you’re going to get punched by someone’s uncle or go skinny dipping with the couple.” He pauses. “And that’s what I like: putting myself in weird, awkward situations.”
These include passing out inside a large but poorly ventilated wedding cake. “It was a small wedding and a lot of stuff was DIY. It wasn’t fun to realise they had forgotten the air holes.” Or a man nearly dying on the dancefloor. “Yeah, that happened, too. But he made it.”
