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Jens Lekman Is Back and Oversharing

The twee sound of Swedish indie-pop heartthrob Jens Lekman may not seem to have much in common with certain strains of contemporary American rap music, but, oh — it does. It’s not the music so much as the lyrical content: Lekman’s attention to minutiae and general tendency to overshare can also be spotted in recent works by the likes of Eminem, Drake, and everyone’s favorite new Twitter user, Kanye West (or basically, anything that could more or less be lumped together under the unwieldy sub-genre term “emo-rap.”) Of course, where those dudes get super-specific about the particulars of hip-hop stardom at various landings of the stardom spectrum, Lekman gets super-specific about the particulars of the life of a moderately famous, unlucky-in-love independent musician. At various points on his last full length, 2007’s Night Falls Over Kortedala, Lekman sang about getting his hair cut, slicing up an avocado, and setting up his out-of-office auto-reply. (It was fantastic.) And with that half-baked thought out of the way, let’s get to Lekman’s new song, “The End of the World Is Bigger Than Love,” which he released on his blog this afternoon. It’s a sad love song that includes the lyrics “I was in Washington, D.C., for the election.” Yay, Lekman’s back!

Jens Lekman Is Back and Oversharing