Aug. 4, 2012 at 2:27pm with 4 notes
I broke up with my college girlfriend in the summer of 2007. Before we’d left school, I made her a mix with Jens Lekman’s “Julie” on it, for obvious reasons. Lekman’s catalog had wound up on my hard drive, like so many others, during the near-thoughtless constant process of downloading anything remotely relevant during my college years. I didn’t start listening to him until that summer, sweating on the Manhattan subway, playing “Tram #7 To Heaven” on loop on my first-generation iPod because I was afraid the rest of the album wouldn’t live up to it. We broke up. The rest of the album lived up to “Tram #7 to Heaven,” thank God, as did Night Falls Over Kortedala, which came out a few weeks later and became the patient guardian of my mental health. In the coming months, I saw Lekman twice: once on a date with a girl who was stringing me along, and in the spring, with my new girlfriend. I told her I loved her for the first time that month, I think; the Lekman version of “A Little Lost,” where he sings about “thinking about kissing you,” was the soundtrack, internally if not otherwise. We celebrated her 25th birthday at a boutique hotel, watching Lekman singing about Kirsten Dunst by a Hollywood pool.  Jens Lekman’s I Know What Love Isn’t comes out next month. Four days later, we’ll be married. 

I broke up with my college girlfriend in the summer of 2007. Before we’d left school, I made her a mix with Jens Lekman’s “Julie” on it, for obvious reasons. Lekman’s catalog had wound up on my hard drive, like so many others, during the near-thoughtless constant process of downloading anything remotely relevant during my college years. I didn’t start listening to him until that summer, sweating on the Manhattan subway, playing “Tram #7 To Heaven” on loop on my first-generation iPod because I was afraid the rest of the album wouldn’t live up to it. We broke up. The rest of the album lived up to “Tram #7 to Heaven,” thank God, as did Night Falls Over Kortedala, which came out a few weeks later and became the patient guardian of my mental health. In the coming months, I saw Lekman twice: once on a date with a girl who was stringing me along, and in the spring, with my new girlfriend. I told her I loved her for the first time that month, I think; the Lekman version of “A Little Lost,” where he sings about “thinking about kissing you,” was the soundtrack, internally if not otherwise. We celebrated her 25th birthday at a boutique hotel, watching Lekman singing about Kirsten Dunst by a Hollywood pool. 

Jens Lekman’s I Know What Love Isn’t comes out next month. Four days later, we’ll be married. 

  1. lewisandhisblog said: have you heard it yet? I’m listening to it right now after discovering/falling in love with Jens at the beginning of the summer.
  2. rawkblog posted this