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Everything no longer stops and falls to the music when Jakob Hellman releases something new for the first time in 31 years.
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Photo: MAGNUS SANDBERG / AFTONBLADET
Now it really happens. Jakob Hellman’s second record it’s finally underway.
The album is called “Finally Gone” and will be released in January. Already today there are two new songs.
– Actually, I think it could be a third album very soon. Or at least another 30 years will not pass, says the mythical and soon “much better” current singer and songwriter.
We, who were with the spring of 1989, when I was 23 years old Jakob hellman Lapland’s Vuollerim, without exaggeration, turned Swedish music upside down with its intersection of Madness Y Elvis costello, the tradition of the national song and the completely inimitable written and expressed lyrics on the album “… and the great sea”, have been waiting ever since. In a sequel, or at least some new music.
The singer fled Stockholm and the figure he had created to Lund and Malmö and kept a low profile for most of the 90s. Meanwhile, the status of “… and the great sea” only grew.
But for the past 20 years, Hellman has at irregular intervals performed concerts and given interviews in which he has noted that new music has been produced and not infrequently lamented the delay. However, the most concrete evidence that something was happening didn’t come until last year when he embarked on the anniversary tour “Finally Gone, Instead of 30 Years: Always”, which became a kind of triumphant train and Above all, he offered a line. new songs that easily matched classics like “Tears” and “Be Friends.”
Full in January
And today is the time. Jakob Hellman releases his first own songs in 31 years in the form of a double single “I can’t say goodbye to you” / “I go in somewhere and I feel outside”. In January comes perhaps the most anticipated sequel in the history of the Swedish album, just as the tour was nicknamed “Finally Gone.”
– I always thought I would make a new album, it was not something I just invented. The reason he’s coming now is last fall’s tour. Then I forced myself to write some things to talk about in the middle of the conversation and I finished some songs that would suit her.
The 54-year-old singer sits in an old movie chair in the Ingrid de Bysistorget studio in Stockholm and talks about the record he has made with the producers. Magnus “Kitok” Ekelund Y Jonatan lundberg, also director of Hellman’s backing band that plays on the album and was on the tour last year.
– We started recording when we met in Stockholm for the Circus concert. Then I said yes to “Much better”, which made it quite favorable to sign contracts with record companies. So we had to deliver a record a little bit faster than we thought. That deadline did a lot to get rid of it.
Not that I think much about death, but I write about it to joke with death, to challenge it.
And the legendary performance anxiety released sometime in the process?
– It has probably gotten smaller and smaller over the years. Above all, it was like that when he was just making music. I felt indefinitely pressured from different directions. Since then, life has received other ingredients. Everything no longer stops and falls with the music. Now I feel like I can make an album that, yeah, will be a bit of a flop. Of course, I don’t expect that, I’ll probably be sorry if you do, but I think I can continue anyway.
Small flavor
What can you say about the songs that are being released now?
– It’s a little taste. “Outside” is like a Jakob Hellman song and the other one is quite different from what I have done before, simplified and quite long. But with a really good text, if I can say it myself.
Hellman says that some of the songs on the album are quite old, but that several of the lyrics were not written until the day before they were released on the tour. As I prepare for this interview, I discover that he sang a portion of the lyrics for “Outside” already at a “Music Agency” performance in 1999.
– I did? Shit, is he that old? Yes, it must have been frozen somewhere.
It may be a third album
Do you have a lot of songs in stock that were not included in this album?
– Yes, quite a few. But not so many good ones. Although also some good ones that I not only had time to finish or I thought you could save for the next project.
So maybe it could be a third album not too far in the future?
– Yes, actually I think so. In any case, 30 years will not be necessary.
I have taken a look at the entire album and without going too far before the events, the impression remains from when he played several of the songs live last year. It is still clearly Jacobite pop but with a more mature touch, perhaps a little more existential. As he stated with his calm humor from the stage, “death runs like a red thread” through several of the lyrics.
– Not that I think much about death, but I write about it to joke with death, to defy it. It tires me a bit when people talk about how life is short and there are a thousand things you have to do and see before you die. I have felt that there is something wrong with the approach of life that makes it not fun.
Clean standing routines
During all the years outside of the pop circus, Hellman’s image as a secret secret kuf grew stronger and stronger. Something that got a real overhaul on the anniversary tour, where he often drew clean stand-up routines between songs.
And this fall, he crashes directly into the wider population with “Much Better.”
You must have gotten the question from TV4 every year.
– No, it’s actually only been happening once before, when someone else said no. But they haven’t seen me in other contexts so I don’t think they trusted that I’ve been stable enough to implement it.
How was the experience?
– He was very kind and you felt that they took care of you. One day I thought I was singing so bad that I just wanted to stop and go home. But I came back emotionally and got into it. We were there for five days, but I could have stayed a bit longer. It felt difficult to go out into the world again.
Hellman, however, takes the impending attention in stride, as he will be at a reasonable distance. He has lived with his family in Mallorca for a little over a year, where his wife Carolina he works as a priest in the Church of Sweden in Palma.
“I hope we stay”
Are you having fun down there?
– Yes, but we have been very busy so that you have not had time to think so much about being on a Mediterranean island. Especially since there are so many Swedes there. But now it begins to feel like home for real. I hope we stay.
One of the new songs is called “Must be happy now”. Are you in a good place in life?
– Yes I think so. At least for being me, he said (laughs). You have to be happy if you know that there will be times when it feels fun and I want to keep making new music. So I call it good.
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Five images of his career
Press photo of the launch of “… and the great sea” in 1989
“A successful photoshoot. I borrowed the shoes and slightly oversized coat from Sven Dolling, who was a cosmetic consultant on the photo shoot. There was no band for the guitar so we found an elastic band and then it went down to below the knees, but we thought it looked great. My own glasses had been broken so I had to borrow these and a couple more. The look was born in the moment. Then it became a brand. “
With presenters Niklas Levy and Ingvar Storm at the 1989 Grammy Awards
“I think it’s a bit embarrassing to see it because you realize that I really want to build an image. ‘I want to thank my father and mother’ or whatever they say. But it feels a little artificial because I didn’t used to call Daddy my Daddy. Of course, I was kidding when I put on the sunglasses, but it still shows that I really wanted to be cool. “
The party tour with the backing band Damn 1999
“There are some looks where it seems like I wanted to be pretty. And maybe I wanted to, but I think it’s a cheap trick. From the beginning it would be Damn with Jakob Hellman, I sneaked into his set. But then it still became my name on the poster and not Damn songs. I really didn’t want to do that. “
With Mrs. Karolina Svensson in “Beautiful weather” at Liseberg 2012
“Nice! How pretty she is with her dark hair. We sing well together so it’s fun to have her on stage when she can. It often doesn’t work out because someone has to take care of the kids.”
Video recording for Kitok’s single “Mitt elixir” 2019
“This feels like the beginning of what we’re doing now. I met Kitok when he was Magnus Ekelund and he played pop in Swedish. We played at the same place in Jokkmokk and I got to visit one of his songs. When he became Kitok, I sang ‘ My Elixir. ‘Then he also came on my tour and helped me choose musicians. “
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