ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The singer-songwriter Jens Lekman released this song more than 20 years ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IF YOU EVER NEED A STRANGER (TO SING AT YOUR WEDDING)")
JENS LEKMAN: (Singing) If you ever need a stranger to sing at your wedding, a last-minute choice, then I am your man.
SHAPIRO: He meant it as a sort of joke and couldn't have guessed where it would lead.
LEKMAN: People for some reason took it very seriously. And they started asking me if I wanted to play at their weddings. And then it just kept going. And I started really liking it, and it became a side job for me.
SHAPIRO: He would write an original song for each couple based on their specific story. And as that side job took off, Lekman reached out to the novelist, David Levithan, with a pitch.
DAVID LEVITHAN: He came to me and said, I have this idea. I think it could be a book, maybe with songs. And I thought, oh, this is a really interesting project. And I love the notion of alternating the stories of the people getting married with original songs written about these fictional couples. And it just seemed like a perfect partnership.
SHAPIRO: That partnership resulted in the new novel and album "Songs For Other People's Weddings." The book is built around a series of weddings and a Swedish singer-songwriter, called J, who serenades each couple with original songs about their love.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEKMAN: (Singing) A librarian and a contractor walk into a bar...
SHAPIRO: Although the weddings and the main character J are fictional, there are a few anecdotes based on Lekman's real-life career as a wedding singer.
LEKMAN: There's a very humiliating cake scene, for example, in the book that...
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) The character emerges from a cake.
LEKMAN: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: But it's very hot in there, and it doesn't go very well.
LEKMAN: Well, there's no air in there. So that's one thing, for example, that happened at a wedding.
SHAPIRO: That actually happened to you?
LEKMAN: That did happen, yes. Note to anyone who wants their wedding singer to pop out of a cake, is to make air holes.
SHAPIRO: So tell us about how the actual process worked. I understand some of the chapters began with David creating something, some began with Jens creating something. What was the process?
LEVITHAN: Yeah, we decided to sort of change it up, because some of the time, Jens would give me a song. And I would have to come up with the wedding that would lead to that song. And other times, especially as the book progressed and we got to know the characters more, I would write a chapter and then Jens would go and compose a song to go for that chapter. And we wanted to sort of do two things at once. Because obviously we are reacting to the couple in the chapter, but also the stories and story of the relationship of the wedding singer, J, and his girlfriend, V, who are growing estranged and are in different locations as the book progresses. So we wanted to sort of map out the story of that relationship, as well as the story of the relationships and the weddings in each chapter. And we did it just by exchanging.
SHAPIRO: Jens, can you tell us one of the songs that you wrote that David then had to construct a chapter around?
LEKMAN: I think the first five songs. But, I mean, we started with the song "Fifty-five Percent," for example.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT")
LEKMAN: (Singing) Think of life as a battery ticking backwards slow. Instead of being 37, we got 55% to go. Think of all the time.
I made up a couple in my mind, and then I wrote the song for them. And that's how we kicked off. But it took a while because I think something happened around chapter five when we switched it around, when David sent me the chapters first. Because then I couldn't, like, emotionally - you know, I could feel more for the couples once I read who they were. I didn't have to just make them up in my mind.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT")
LEKMAN: (Singing) I'll never know you completely, and it tears me up inside. We met in the wrestling ring. We were young...
SHAPIRO: A number of the characters in the book seem to view the wedding singer, J, as kind of the ultimate romantic, someone who has figured out love. What were you trying to get across by revealing him instead to be somebody who flails in love just as wildly as everyone else in the book?
LEVITHAN: I think that one of the things that was intriguing to me was that he is the ultimate observer of love. And I think what is revealed is that even by observing love, it isn't the same as experiencing it, and that every love story is very individual. It is all so incredibly specific.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEKMAN: (Singing) Every lover is ashamed, over time, rebuilt and changed. Every board replaced bit by bit until all that's left is the lover's name.
SHAPIRO: And, Jens, did you relate to the idea of these couples thinking of you as an expert in love, when actually you have the same struggles as everyone else?
LEKMAN: No, but I do get this a lot in real life when I play at weddings. People think that I am supposed to know something. And I have to go back and ask them, have you actually listened to my songs? You know, they're about the shortcomings. They're about the things that go wrong, the misunderstandings, the heartbreaks mostly.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEKMAN: (Singing) This is the last love song that I'll sing, an ode to whatever fate may bring.
SHAPIRO: David, I know you've collaborated with people on other novels, like "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" with Rachel Cohn and "Will Grayson, Will Grayson" with John Green. But did you learn something specific from working with Jens about the creative process? And Jens, did you learn something specific from working with David that illuminated the creative process in a different way for you?
LEKMAN: Well, if I can start, David managed to describe the creative process of writing these songs and also the connection to the couples, the motivation for writing and for singing at these weddings, in a way that I hadn't actually formulated it to myself. For me, that was a gift from David. He showed me what I was doing.
SHAPIRO: Can you tell us what it was that he showed you?
LEKMAN: Yeah. I mean, for me, one reason why I sing at weddings that I found out is because I felt like there was an emptiness in music in general that came with the age of streaming and the age of tech companies, where music was kind of turned into content. And as a musician, you felt reduced to a maker of content rather than a musician. And I think the reason why I sing at these weddings partly is because I want music to mean something. Like, a couple has chosen my songs for their big day. It couldn't mean more than that, almost.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEKMAN: (Singing) It's that I can't believe that we are on Earth at the same time. And what a time to be alive. We are here at the same time.
LEVITHAN: We are both writing about love, but we're choosing very different forms to write about love. And that was fascinating to me, to see how a song can encapsulate, in such a short amount of time, what I could spend 300 pages trying to convey. And having a book that does both at once and tries to sort of talk about the interplay of life and song and life and music, this was really the only way that I, as an author, could ever get that across, would be to have a partner like Jens to be able to convey that in music as well as in prose.
SHAPIRO: Author David Levithan and singer-songwriter Jens Lekman, creators of the new novel and album "Songs For Other People's Weddings." Thank you so much.
LEVITHAN: Thank you.
LEKMAN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
LEKMAN: (Singing) We were here at the same time. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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