Jens Lekman is an accidental wedding singer. But he’s also a wedding singer for a reason.

Our story starts with a track from his first album, 2004’s When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog. “If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding)” makes an offer to the listener; since Jens knows “every stupid love song that ever touched your heart,” he’s happy to perform at your wedding. Why? Because he’s “just so amazed to witness true love.”

Jens says now, “It was meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but people took it very seriously and started asking me to actually play at their weddings. Which I did happily; it was an honor. In the 2010s, when streaming made it harder to make a living from music, the wedding gigs became a way to get by financially, and also gave new meaning to music itself.”

As a wedding singer, Jens has a particular vantage point from which to see the role love songs can play in our lives. The songwriter’s feelings (ecstasy, agony, or any point in between) are put into the song, and then the performer adds their own feelings, and these become the feelings that are amplified within the listener as they listen. Songs help us experience our emotions as bigger than us. So at a wedding, the newly married couple uses music to universalize their romance so it can be shared with everyone else in the room.

For two decades, the wedding gigs have taken Jens both close to home and around the world. He’s witnessed joyous moments, high anxiety, delirious dancefloor antics, and more than a few mishaps. Sometimes he’s performed at weddings when his own heart was full . . . and other times he witnessed the couple’s happiness at a cool remove, because love songs can have that effect, too, making you feel left out when you’re missing someone or painfully lonely.