Jens Lekman announces new album, Songs for Other People’s Weddings

Jens Lekman has announced his first new studio album in eight years. After releasing revamped versions of two of his celebrated albums in 2022, which we included in our best reissues of that year, Lekman has announced Songs for Other People’s Weddings, which is out Sept. 12 via Secretly Canadian. Today he’s shared “Candy From a Stranger,” which you can hear below. Lekman is also on tour this fall, check out those dates below.

The album is a companion to a book of the same name by David Levithan (The Lover’s Dictionary, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist) and partially inspired by Lekman’s own side-career as a wedding singer. It’s a fictionalized account of J, an unlucky-in-love musician.

Lekman said in a statement, “The idea to make a narrative concept album (a rock opera?) felt forbidden. Which, for me, is usually a sign that I’m on the right path. While investigating the genre of narrative concept albums, I realized that one of my all-time favorite albums, Frank Sinatra’s Watertown, was in fact just that—a record that told a chronological story over the length of an LP. Having never been a fan of musicals or rock operas, this album served as inspiration.”

Jens Lekman Songs For Other People’s Weddings tracklist:

1. The First Lovesong
2. A Tuxedo Sewn For Two
3. Candy From a Stranger
4. Two Little Pigs
5. Speak To Me In Music
6. With You I Can Hear My Own Voice
7. I Want To Want You Again
8. GOT-JFK
9. Wedding In Brooklyn
10. For Skye
11. Increasingly Obsolete
12. On a Pier, On the Hudson
13. Wedding In Leipzig
14. LEJ-GOT
15. You Have One New Message
16. Just For One Moment
17. The Last Lovesong

Jens Lekman tour dates:

11/08-Minneapolis, MN-Amsterdam Bar & Hall
11/09-Chicago, IL-Lincoln Hall
11/10-Toronto, ON-The Great Hall
11/12-Boston, MA-The Sinclair
11/13-Northampton, MA-Iron Horse
11/14-Philadelphia, PA-Underground Arts
11/16-Brooklyn, NY-Music Hall of Williamsburg
11/17-Washington, D.C.-Union Stage
11/19-Durham, NC-Motorco Music Hall
11/21-Atlanta, GA-The EARL
11/22-Nashville, TN-Exit/In
11/24-Dallas, TX-Deep Ellum
11/25 – Austin, TX – Mohawk
11/28 – Phoenix, AZ – Crescent Ballroom
11/29 – Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room
11/30 – San Francisco, CA – The Independent
12/02 – Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater
12/03 – Seattle, WA – Neumos