Grammy-Nominated Artist Lukas Graham Goes Over His New Single, "Scars"

Lukas Graham made his global debut with the 2016 self-titled debut album, spawning the 7X platinum, 3X Grammy-nominated hit, “7 Years." Now the multi-platinum artist has an emotive new track called “Scars.” The song is accompanied by a lyric video filmed by his wife while social distancing at their home in Denmark during this coronavirus pandemic. The single is the latest release from the Danish artist, following last year’s single, "Lie."

Video Transcript

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RICKY CAMILLERI: Hi, folks, welcome back to "BUILD at Home." I am once again you're at-home host, Ricky Camilleri recording from my apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which I've yet to put anything on the walls up. But anyway, I'm joined right now by an incredibly talented singer songwriter Lukas Graham who's here to talk to us about his music-- how he's living during our quarantine times, and especially talk about his new song, "Scars." Lukas, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining me.

LUKAS GRAHAM: Thank you for taking the time, Ricky. It's nice to be able to still do interviews and work while being forced to stay more or less at home.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah, before we get started, I just want to say we've been saying this at the top of every interview. It's incredibly important. But upwards of 404 school lunches have been missed by children across the country due to school closures from the coronavirus. If you are interested in helping finding out how you can help children, get those meals that they need, please go to nokidhungry.org where there is a lot of information for how you can chip in and help kids get fed.

Lukas, how are you holding up during your quarantine? What are you doing to stay busy, stay focused? Is that even a priority for you? What are you trying to-- what are you trying-- how are you feeling?

LUKAS GRAHAM: I would say that me and my family were feeling fairly good during this quarantine in state 22 if I'm not mistaken. And we're a little under pressure in the sense that, like our due date for the second kid is like, on the 20th of April where they're estimating the coronavirus to peak in Denmark. So that's interesting to not put a negative label on it. It's an intense feeling. Let's put it there. But we've been trying to keep busy.

We have a little yard, like a 900-square foot cobblestone yard in between the apartments that we live in. And there was, like, a little lead corner with no stones. So I've been like, amateur cobbling. And there like, there are probably like, 2.6 tons of granite that I've moved-- 400 cobblestones. It's always been a fun job. But now it's done. So I'm looking to do more things, because it's not that it's important to stay busy, but it's important for me to burn some energy.

RICKY CAMILLERI: I've noticed-- I've noticed from my balcony lots of neighbors amateur cobbling or amateur gardening. And you can tell it's amateur, which is wonderful because there is like, every 15 minutes or so, there's like a moment where they pause and sort of look around them, sit, look around and like, take in what exactly it is they're doing and why they're doing it and then go back to work. [LAUGHS]

LUKAS GRAHAM: Recently I've been doing it with my father-in-law who's my neighbor. where they are both in-laws live next door to us. And every day we'd go out. We'd lay down some cobblestones. And then the next day, we'd go out, look at it, and probably change the position of at least two of them.

And either they were sitting too high or sitting too low. Or water wasn't flowing away from, like, the foundations of the house-- all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, I've been-- I've gotten really good at laying down stones so that water goes away from my house. [LAUGHS]

RICKY CAMILLERI: You know, I'm curious. You said you're in the-- you're in the Netherlands, right?

LUKAS GRAHAM: Denmark, but, yeah--

RICKY CAMILLERI: Denmark.

LUKAS GRAHAM: We're close.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Excuse me. You're in Denmark. And are the hot-- I mean, I know that it's going to sit us in a peak around April 20th when your child is due. How are the hospitals doing in Denmark? Is it like here in New York where they're sort of overrun and they're trying to figure out exactly where they're going to put new patients?

LUKAS GRAHAM: We have-- we're only 6 million people in our country. We have a respirator ventilator cap at about 1,000 and something. And right now we have, I think, 138 in need of one of those. Our country shut down fairly quickly. And what-- we have a brilliant public health system. And what the government and the health system has basically done is that every private hospital and clinic has been turned into a public hospital or clinic for the time being.

And then all operations that are not life-threatening or corona are being postponed until further in the year. And you can say that when you have a highly centralized country that is the size of Denmark, these things are possible. And so we're doing good. We're on, like, the green slope. We're not looking at a hospital system being overwhelmed or flooded or like, yeah.

RICKY CAMILLERI: You're a man after my socialist heart. [LAUGHS]

LUKAS GRAHAM: I mean, Denmark is probably one of the most socialist countries in the world if you look at the tax bracket and the amount the government does to make sure everybody is good. And it's also one of the reasons why there's not a forced curfew, because we want to keep like our socialist democratic ideals. People are being asked to do what the government would like them to do in this crisis. And it seems like it's working very well.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Well, it's great. That's good to hear. Thank you for answering that question for me. And honestly, you know, I'll say it at the end of the interview, as well. But congratulations on the upcoming birth of your second child. And I hope everything goes as accordingly as it can possibly go.

LUKAS GRAHAM: It's a weird situation. And like, half of the maternity wards have been converted into corona wards. So it puts a different type of pressure on the system. But I would say that the maternity wards are going to need a little more space in like, nine months when like, the generation corona is born.

RICKY CAMILLERI: [LAUGHS] The new baby boom.

LUKAS GRAHAM: Oh, yeah, that will be the new boomers. [LAUGHS]

RICKY CAMILLERI: Let's talk about your song "Scars." It's a beautiful-- it's a beautiful song. Where did this-- I mean, obviously you're married. You're onto your second child. So this feels to me like a song about the end of a relationship. But maybe it's about something broader than that and different-- and all different kinds of scars.

LUKAS GRAHAM: No, "Scars" is an interesting song, because I've been very busy building a family, building a career, writing songs, touring, promoting. And "Scars" is actually the first outside song that I'm releasing. I've changed some of the lyrics. I've written a new bridge with Aldae, one of the writers on the song. And one of the reasons why I'm releasing "Scars" as the first song from an outside songwriting team is that it just fit. I heard it, and I felt something.

And to me, it's not about a relationship. To me, it's about the physical and emotional scars that you gain throughout your life-- the scars that shape you as a person and shape your-- the ones that shape your personality too. And there was a journalist a couple of weeks ago that asked me oh, what if you could erase-- like, because in the second verse, I talk about like if I could wash them all away.

Like, if you erase all your scars and all the pain you felt with those scars, you're going to lose all the wisdom you gained by them too. And I feel that's a really beautiful sentiment in a day and age when people try to look perfect instead of exposing their flaws. It's like the flaws that you dare to show to the world kind of determines your character in some sense.

And I wouldn't want to miss out on any of my scars. They are full and plenty from seeing police brutality in the neighborhood I grew up in to my grandfather and my father dying to one of my best friends taking his own life. There are so many different ways of feeling and expressing pain. It's a conversation that we don't have enough between people, friends, families.

RICKY CAMILLERI: And I don't think we ever have the conversation about how to take pain with you. It's expected that pain goes away or pain fades away. But it's always been my experience that, you know, the severity of it fades. But it doesn't really leave you completely. And there is a power to that.

LUKAS GRAHAM: And the severity also changes and comes back. Like, when my-- when we were pregnant or when my fiancee-- we're not married yet because, again, the time. And when we were pregnant with my first daughter, like, I was so sad my dad wasn't there to experience it. And then she got pregnant again. And then I was really happy.

And then suddenly it came back-- foop! Oh, I'm just so sad my dad isn't here to see this. Like, it was like, complete deja vu. And I wasn't expecting to feel it as intensely as I did. So it's also that, like, we're waving on these scars and these pains that we're feeling.

Yeah, it's-- being, like, 30, it's strange that the things that hurt years ago-- like, you keep thinking that one day, like, you're going to grow up for real and suddenly realize maybe not, ever. And that's a pretty cool epiphany. We're just is big kids who've lived longer.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah, there's this-- I had a conversation with someone a few months ago that was about the mistakes that you make as a person in your early 20s that are like, inherently who you are and how you deal with the world. You expect them to go away. But they kind of creep back up.

And the only thing that is worse about them is that there's more ammo that you've consistently done this thing, whereas when you were 20, it's like a new thing that you're realizing you're doing, and you can get over. But when you're 30, you're like, oh, I guess this is just the thing that is going to be a pattern.

LUKAS GRAHAM: Yeah, I mean, I have-- well, we have this sentence at home-- the Mrs. and I where it's like, try not to bleed on people who didn't cut you, because you're so hurt and battered and bruised from your teenage years and your 20s. And instead of realizing that everybody feels that way, you consider your pain to be unique.

You think that you're the only one out there who feels a little misunderstood and feel a little wrong. And you feel like your mom and dad weren't nice enough in this situation or whatever it was. And then suddenly you grow older. And I'd lost my dad at 23, which in ways was a blessing, because I know now at the age of 31 that a girl losing her cat at the age of six felt the same pain as I felt at 23 when my father died. And that, I'm carrying that with you into your adult life or like, "big child" life or whatever we call it.

You're very well aware that nobody necessarily knows your situation. You don't even know yourself well enough to expect other people to know you so you don't have to be disappointed by anybody. And you don't have to necessarily bleed on people who didn't cut you. You could even stop bleeding on the people who did cut you, because you realized that there's something in them. It has nothing to do with you.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Do you feel like "Scars" has a particular resonance right now in this moment?

LUKAS GRAHAM: Yeah, and I was being advised by different people on my team across the world to wait with the release of "Scars." We didn't want to remove the original music video we'd shot. And there was a bunch of interviews and TV moments that we couldn't do because of the quarantines and the country shutting down. And I was like, no, this song talks about this moment like it's been planned for six to eight months when we were releasing this song. But it fit like an eight ball in the pocket.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Well, it fits in the sense-- I mean, from my perspective it fits in the sense that we are developing scars right now. And we will hopefully learn from them in the future. In the future, hopefully we will have wisdom to be able to look back on this moment.

LUKAS GRAHAM: Yeah, I mean, we keep talking about how we can't cut CO2 levels. And then you end greenhouse emissions. Then you realize, oh, like, half of the population just work from home. We are cutting emissions automatically.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Right, it's like 22-- 20% right now of CO2 emissions have been cut basically because of this.

LUKAS GRAHAM: And like, literally, we're still-- like, a lot of people are still working. A lot of people are still receiving paychecks, like, a lot of wheels are still turning. So the question is, how can we learn something to put into our environment like in our cities and stay at home a little more, work a little differently, avoid rush hours forever?

RICKY CAMILLERI: And what do we do with the-- [LAUGHS] just for mental well-being too?

LUKAS GRAHAM: Oh, yeah, that's for mental health--

RICKY CAMILLERI: For mental health purposes to avoid rush hour.

LUKAS GRAHAM: Yeah, definitely.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah, you said that "Scars" was your first song with an outside writing team. How did that happen?

LUKAS GRAHAM: There was sometime during 2019 where I-- I don't know if it's like, had enough was like the right-- I was like, OK, I'm-- I'm really good at singing. I'm also really good at writing songs. But I don't have the time to tour, write songs, promote songs, be a really good dad, be a proper son and like, fiance and brother and uncle.

It's like, there was just too many hats. I was switching hats all the time. And I'm still writing my own songs-- don't get me wrong. I still get one from my [? life. ?] And I change it to make it work the way I would like to sound.

But I'm also at a level now where I'm being sent really, really good songs where like, four years ago, I wouldn't be able to get like this level of song sent. So I had to-- if I was sent the song four or five years ago, I would have to change more than I'm doing now. Does that make sense?

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Is there-- what-- what--

LUKAS GRAHAM: Perfect. Sorry, what are you saying, Ricky?

RICKY CAMILLERI: Oh, that's OK. What was it like? Was there a transition for you? Did you have to wrap your head around the idea of performing or working with somebody else's song since you started as the primary songwriter for yourself?

LUKAS GRAHAM: Well, what I did was I actually had a conversation with myself, not in a schizophrenic kind of way, but more that I started singing professionally when I was eight years old. I'm a classically trained soprano soloist from the Copenhagen Boys Choir. So when I was 12, I sang at the Queens funeral. When I was 13, I toured the eastern seaboard of the United States with the choir.

I had sung in like, so many concerts before I even started writing my own songs. I'd sound Bach, Mozart, Handel, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky-- all of it. And so I was like, hey, why don't I go back to basics and interpret songs and deliver other people's material in the way I can do my own too? It's like, I'm still writing tons of songs. I think I wrote 30 last year. And I'm like, I'm happy about like, 20 of them.

So it's like, I'm still going to release a lot more songs. I just love the fact that there's this other batch of songs that other people have written that fit and work. But, yeah, there was a transition I cut a lot of songs from other people, recorded them, produced some of them, rewrote some of them, rerecorded them again. And during the process, I got comfortable, like knowing that I'm still delivering a perfect product.

RICKY CAMILLERI: "Scars" is out now. What's coming up next for you? I know that you're doing lots of interviews. And you're doing some Instagram live performances-- correct or right?

LUKAS GRAHAM: Yes. I'm trying to keep, like, do with much work if you could say until I guess suddenly and a baby is going to pop up. And I'm going to be locked down in a different way than we are now just being a little family getting to know our new little baby, making sure our 3 and 1/2 year old is comfortable becoming a big sister and doesn't feel like, left out of something.

And then the next thing is going to be a lot of single releases and some album releases. Like, I've written so many songs. I have 24 right now that I deem album worthy. So that's two albums. And I just want to release more music. I want to be able to share more of the stuff that I'm doing.

RICKY CAMILLERI: Yeah. Well, Lukas, congratulations on "Scars" and on the upcoming second baby. I wish you nothing but the best when it comes to April 20 or around that time. And stay healthy, stay safe. Thank you so much for talking to me.

LUKAS GRAHAM: Thank you for the time, Ricky. Hopefully I'll see you again maybe in person one day-- who knows. [LAUGHS]

RICKY CAMILLERI: I hope so too. Take care.

LUKAS GRAHAM: Thank you very much. Take care.

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