When Jens Lekman released “If You Ever Need A Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding)” in 2004, it wasn’t meant to be a literal invitation.
“Wedding singers are these seasoned, tough, hardworking, amazing musicians and singers who can perform for hours. They know every song in the world. I did that for a little while when I needed the work. I toured around with my own PA, playing covers for five hours, and I was terrible at it to be honest,” Lekman shares with me over Zoom from Gothenburg, Sweden. “I don’t know where they get the stamina from to perform for that long.”
Yet people did start inviting him. And not just a few times; as of October 2025, Lekman has performed at approximately 150 weddings, singing and sometimes writing original songs for the couples. It shows the unexpected impact just one song can have on an artist’s life, especially as his experiences as a wedding singer have now inspired Lekman’s latest projects: a new album on Secretly Canadian and a novel he co-wrote with bestselling author David Levithan (Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist), both titled Songs for Other People’s Weddings.
“It started eight years ago as a TV show, actually,” Lekman explains. Collaborating with an American film director ( “I can’t give out the name of the filmmaker, sorry”), Lekman developed several episodes of a series based on his wedding gig anecdotes… until producers sadly pulled the plug. The idea then sat on Lekman’s shelf until the pandemic, when he read Levithan’s 19 Love Songs. Reminded of his project, Lekman contacted the writer and soon, “I would write songs for fictional couples, send them to (Levithan), and he would write the chapters backwards from that.”
Their plan was to create a novel and accompanying album, but according to Lekman, “Halfway through, I started realizing that the album was going to be very confusing because it was just songs for fictional couples that didn’t make sense without the book.” So in came “J,” the wedding singer whose arc provides, “the narrative concept album that you now have in your hands.” He considers J, “Someone I could have been, but I’m not,” with their lives diverging at the release of “If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding).” Over time, Lekman feels J evolved into a mash-up of him and Levithan, as they spent hours discussing love and relationships to make sure J and his girlfriend V always felt true.
But the creative process for this novel and his albums are different from how Lekman approaches weddings. To any couples interested, it all starts with simply writing Lekman an email (via his website). You’ll start talking and, says Lekman, “At some point, I would interview you and whoever you’re getting married to, to get an idea of who you are and what your love story is about, and try to find some poetry in your relationship. I try to capture that and bring it to the ceremony.” To uncover that depth, Lekman asks the couple a variety of questions, from light ones about how they met, heavier ones like what love means to them, and fun ones like what songs would represent them individually and as a couple. “That’s something that always gets them going,” shares Lekman. “I usually ask them if they have a pet as well, and what relationship they have to their pets. Sometimes I’ve even written the song from the perspective of the pets.”
Writing songs for couples has helped Lekman better understand his own songwriting. “What it made me realize is that my best songs come out of me writing to someone else, when there is another person or a couple or whatever in mind that I’m addressing,” he shares. “I usually say that my biggest inspiration is my sent folder in my email program.” Lekman feels that addressing someone else helps limit the natural artistic impulse to look inwards. “I think all my best songs have always been letters to other people, like “A Postcard to Nina” or the project Correspondence that I did. And it’s the same with the couples. They are like love letters to the couples.”
Speaking with Lekman, it’s clear he’s not doing these weddings for the money (though, as he jokes on the album, they do pay better than Spotify). From his joyous smile and warm tone, you can feel how much he enjoys performing at weddings. “One thing I love about weddings, a reason why I do them, is because they are completely unpredictable. I like putting myself into awkward situations where I don’t know what I’m going to get,” Lekman offers. “There’s a scene in the book where I am supposed to jump out of a cake but they forget to make air holes and so I pass out in the cake… and that happened. You never know if you’re going to get punched in the face by someone’s uncle or if you’re going to go skinny-dipping with the guests.” This is a stark contrast to touring, which Lekman also loves—“There’s no other time when I feel at my most mindful”—but admits it is more predictable. “When I do a wedding, it’s much more about being in the moment and being open to improvisation,” he explains. “I’m still trying to learn from these weddings. I think there’s a lot of things there to pick up and transfer to the shows that I do at venues.”
Each wedding is unique, but Lekman does have a favorite type: “I’ve always liked the simple, stripped-down weddings where it’s very in the moment. There’s a wedding in the book that was based on a wedding that I played once on a hill. They just sent me the coordinates. I climbed up that hill. There was just the bride and the groom, the officiant, a photographer, and me. The ceremony was absolutely beautiful, very short. Then I played a song that I had written for them and then we just walked down the hill. Really beautiful.” On the flip side, when asked if there was ever a wedding he couldn’t connect with, Lekman just chuckles and offers, “I’ve played two or three billionaire weddings and they are… special.”
Billionaires aside, Lekman has no intent of being done with weddings, nor Songs For Other People’s Weddings. “I still think this hasn’t reached its final form yet. I feel like the album and the book are sketches for something that I haven’t yet been able to articulate,” he muses. Part of that might come to pass as he tours the album, starting in North America this November (with David Levithan joining for a few dates). But Lekman isn’t stopping there, adding, “I still think that it could be a musical or a TV show or something like that.”
What if someday this wedding singer becomes the one getting married? What song would Lekman want played at his own wedding? “I’ve never really thought about that. I guess I’ve always just seen myself as the guy who sings at weddings,” Lekman shrugs, then adds, “I know what song I would have at my funeral, but I don’t know what song I would have at my wedding.”
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