GENRE: Rock
LABEL: Secretly Canadian
REVIEWED: 16th September, 2025
Jens Lekman has always walked the fine line between sincerity and kitsch. His new record, Songs for Other People’s Weddings, extends that balancing act into one of his most ambitious and eccentric projects yet. Created as a companion piece to David Levithan’s novel of the same name, the album plays out like a sprawling romantic comedy full of vivid detail, sharp humor, and an unflinching devotion to love in all its messy glory.
Lekman’s style has always divided listeners. His penchant for grand orchestration, sweeping strings, and unabashedly sentimental crooning can feel overindulgent to some. To others, though, that excess is precisely the point. Songs for Other People’s Weddings leans into this with gusto: mariachi horns, baroque piano flourishes, saxophone solos, and even theme-park-esque motifs find their way into the 17-track opus. It’s theatrical, sometimes absurd, but never dishonest. Like an ornate dessert piled too high, it might overwhelm at first taste, yet for those who acquire it, the sweetness is irresistible.
The concept grew out of a long-running correspondence between Lekman and Levithan. Rather than simply soundtrack the novel, Lekman used the book’s characters as jumping-off points, creating what feels like a stand-alone musical, complete with recurring voices, shifting perspectives, and narrative arcs. The result is both playful and poignant: a celebration of fleeting connection, told through the lens of a fictional wedding singer who is clearly, in part, a Lekman surrogate.
At its core, the record tells the story of J and V, two characters whose romance blooms at a wedding where guests dress up as songs he’s “Raspberry Beret,” she’s “Crazy in Love.” Their relationship swings between intimacy and distance, buoyed by Lekman’s lush arrangements and Matilda Sargren’s striking guest vocals as V. Through their ups and downs, Lekman explores the tension between being both inside and outside of love: the participant and the observer, the lover and the one documenting it all.
Musically, the album is full of surprises. “The First Lovesong” begins in a gravelly baritone before soaring into a chorus that recalls Cohen filtered through pop maximalism. “Candy From a Stranger” shimmers with dance-floor energy, while “Speak to Me in Music” could soundtrack an ’80s cocktail bar. “Wedding in Brooklyn” bursts with Prince-inspired funk, and “For Skye” drifts in a dreamlike haze that recalls the Beach Boys as reimagined by Steve Reich. The contrasts are intentional lekman uses eclectic sounds to mirror the unpredictable emotions of love itself.
What’s most striking, though, is Lekman’s gift for storytelling. His lyrics capture tiny details with wit and tenderness, often balancing the ridiculous and the profound in a single line. He can make you laugh at an awkward dinner-table description in one verse and then quietly devastate you in the next. It’s this duality of absurd comedy and genuine heartbreak that makes Songs for Other People’s Weddings so compelling.
At 80 minutes, the album can feel overwhelming if consumed in one sitting. But broken into two halves, it unfolds like a two-act play: the first tracing the formation of a relationship, the second reflecting on its dissolution. Through it all, Lekman’s commitment to treating songs as letters personal, conversational, and deeply human remains intact.
With this project, Lekman reaffirms his role not just as a songwriter, but as a chronicler of love in all its absurd beauty. Whether performed on stage, written in a book, or sung at a stranger’s wedding, his music insists that if we are to talk about love, then we must also talk about music.
