It does more than any five minutes of pop music has a right to, frankly, detailing a charmingly uncomfortable encounter that takes place while Jens and his friend Nina are enjoying some time together in Berlin. Everything is going great until they’re walking up to Nina’s dad’s apartment for dinner and she informs Jens just as they’re about to walk in that he needs to pretend to be her boyfriend. You see, her dad wouldn’t approve of the truth, which is that she’s a lesbian, so Nina opts to give him some fiction instead. Jens is an unwilling participant, but it’s too late.

The trio have their meal together, it’s understandably awkward, and Jens tries to say the right things to Nina’s dad to impress him. (Incidentally, it works a little too well and the dad keeps emailing Jens “all the time” following the meetup.)

It’s funny in the way having friends around family members can be funny, but also sad in ways that are much obviously deeper. By the end we learn that the song is actually a postcard from Jens. And then there’s that moment that really got me, that always really gets me. He says he just wants to check in with her that he’s been thinking about their time with her father a lot, and that he just wanted to say “don’t let anyone stand in your way.”

There’s a minute or so of the song left at this point, and Jens opts to spend that minute singing “DON’T LET ANYONE STAND IN YOUR WAY!” He doesn’t scream it exactly, but he really lets it fly, he belts it, and it’s just so triumphant and beautiful, its message so true and pure. It seems only fitting to type it in all caps. It’s the culmination of a story that’s full of cringe moments, embarrassing little relatable exchanges, and a much bigger issue bubbling just below the surface. It’s the difficult and righteous answer that so many must accept, in a world where so many others are absolutely going to stand in their way when they want to simply be themselves. It’s incredible.

(A quick parenthetical aside that probably won’t actually be that quick if I’m being perfectly honest: a decade and a half after releasing Kortedala, Jens re-released the album under a new name—The Linden Trees are Still in Blossom—with new arrangements for the original songs plus a few completely new songs. It’s an unusual move for an artist, one that apparently had something to do with the fact that when Jens released Kortedala he was still fairly under the radar as far as singer-songwriters go, and as such, perhaps didn’t perform as much due diligence as he should’ve w/r/t some samples on the album.

But anyway, he releases this new version of an old album, and it’s predictably lovely. If you’re a Kortedala super fan, as I’ve most certainly become over the years, you can sit there and listen to this new version of it loudly in your living room all afternoon, yelling out things like “That’s a new drum fill!” and “He cut out the horns here!” until any and all extremely patient loved ones in your general vicinity vacate the premises entirely.

All the new arrangements and embellishments and omissions are delightful to behold, like meeting up with an old friend after many years and discovering the new elements of their personality that are scattered throughout a whole that still feels comfortable, relaxing, good. But it was the title track, “The Linden Trees are Still in Blossom,” that really stopped me in my tracks on that first listen.

The song is a follow-up to “A Postcard to Nina” where Lekman tries to reconnect with her. He sings that a recent email to Nina bounced and since she doesn’t use social media, he’s found himself anxiously filling in the blanks as to her whereabouts. While wondering if their friendship fizzled or if he could’ve been better at staying in touch, his memories wander back to high school, where it turns out he and Nina became pen pals—he in Sweden, she in Germany. As he reminisces back to the present, he sings that his fans have asked about her over the years, that some of them wondered if she was real, but that others, in places where homosexuality is oppressed or punished, knew that she was real, understood her pain.

Eventually, he notes that “Sometimes I think about your father, how he turned a 180 soon after. I hope you’ve been able to reconcile, it must be hard, but I know you’d try. If you see him, please say hi.” This line fucking levels me every time every time I hear it, a reminder that things are getting better even when it seem like they’re very much not, that people often grow and evolve and change their ignorant opinions, that maybe we don’t have to fear for our future in what can often seem like a profoundly stupid world.)

But back to 2007. I remember sitting there hunched in my little cubicle and trying to be cool and subtle about it, wearing my stupid little ear buds plugged into my crummy old laptop that the music magazine didn’t even pay for, hiding there in the semi-dark silence of the office, listening to this absurdly affecting story with the life-affirming payoff, and crying. It felt good. It was the start of a lifelong appreciation of an artist’s body of work, a reminder of what music could be and the feelings it could inspire. I no longer write about music for a living, but it was one of those moments that reminded me why I did, one that forever changed how I feel about art in general.

I’ve cried countless times to this song over the years, and for that matter to plenty of his songs, both live and on record. It’s funny, because I’m realizing that he became one of my favorite musical artists in the years since, and that our relationship started with crying. While sad, sometimes, sure. But other times while happy, intentionally putting on his music because I knew it would give me some self-fulfilling tears. Sometimes the feeling sneaks up on you, other times you know it’s coming. Both options can be great for different reasons.

The latest—and certainly not last—time Jens Lekman made me cry was the summer of 2022. I was 39 years old, and I was sitting on my couch at 5:57am on a Wednesday, quietly listening to “A Postcard to Nina,” hoping not to wake up my sleeping family while trying to find the right words for a book about crying. I marveled at how much had changed in the past 15 years, finding some comfort in knowing that songs like this are always right there waiting for you if you need them. If you want, you can sit there and you can cry and it will feel great. And so that’s what I did, while writing this essay for you.

This essay is included in the book Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears, which features a bunch of interesting people—Mike Birbiglia, Phoebe Bridgers, Hanif Abdurraqib, Jia Tolentino, and more—writing about crying.