Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe. All my Songs of the Week are featured on my Top of the Poptastic playlist, along with the rest of my faves from 2017.
If you paid attention to Scandinavian indie-pop in the 2000s, you’ll certainly know Swedish singer Jens Lekman and the band Hello Saferide, fronted by Annika Norlin. Both Jens and Annika are known for their witty, storytelling lyrics, and they each have songs in their back-catalogues in the style of letters – Jens’ A Postcard to Nina and Hello Saferide’s Long Lost Penpal. Therefore they’re the perfect participants for a new project Jens has come up with, called Correspondence. Each month throughout 2018, one of them will write a song in the form of a letter to the other, updating them on their latest news and ponderings. The first comes from Jens, who sings about the act of making friends, and the history of how he met Annika. It’s not one of his greatest works melodically (if you don’t know his music, start with You Are The Light, Wedding In Finistère or my personal fave, Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo) but I’m very interested to see how the project works out. Will they respond to what each other wrote? Will they sing about current events in the world, or their lives? I’m sure they’re just as excited to find out as I am.
Click here to listen to Who Really Needs Who.