Jens Lekman & Annika Norlin

Jens Lekman & Annika Norlin wrote songs to each other every month in 2018 (listen)

Over the past year, Jens Lekman and Annika Norlin have been sending each other songs every month as part of a project called Correspondence. Jens explains:

A little over a year ago, me and Annika Norlin did what many friends who see each other too seldom do – we promised to get in touch a little more often.
We called the project CORRESPONDENCE.
These were the rules:
* One letter a month, in the shape of a song. Six songs each, twelve in total.
* Only one instrument could be used for each letter.

The songs were attempts to impress each other, make each other laugh and cry.

They contained our thoughts about things that occupied our minds at that very moment.

The songs include one by Jens from July called “Revenge of the Nerds” which is, in part about rewatching that 1984 hit film for the first time in a long time:

You can listen to that and all the songs in their Correspondence series, including “Silent Night” which was released today, and read a little more about it from Jens, below.

The project was a way for us to have an outlet for more spontaneous ideas, and we decided to stay under the radar by only releasing the songs on the internet without attempting to attract much attention. Most of the time we forgot that anyone else could hear them.

”Sometimes someone would come up to me and be like, ’Hey I like that Hibernation song’ and I’d feel startled, like, ’Where did you hear that? That’s much too personal for anyone to hear.’” (Annika)

Annika’s favorite letter of Jens’ is his song from november – On the Edge of Time. “It’s like an entire dystopic tale that starts with him examining his eczema and ends with the probability of the world coming to an end. I also like the March one – Forever young, Forever beautiful. It grew slowly on me, about a mountaineer who tells Jens about her dead husband and how beautiful his body was.”

My favorite letter by Annika is either February’s Showering in Public, about why she’s never liked locker rooms, or December’s Silent Night with it’s hopeful ending.

The rule was that we could only use one instrument per song, to help us focus on the stories and not get lost in production. But in the end, we liked the songs so much it felt like we wanted to help them out, tie them together a bit more, and so we decided to record sparse strings on top of half of the songs. It turned out beautiful, and as soon as we’ve mixed and mastered it we will release it digitally.

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