Joel Alme: "It could as well have been me"

As a pop artist, Joel Alme now feels quite alone about writing from a working class perspective. The reason, he believes, is that it is not so inside at the moment.

- I think there are many bands writing about this that also play pop, but it is never recorded, it is not played on radio, says Joel Alme.

What's the matter now, do you experience?

- Maybe a forward tooth, says Joel Alme, laughing.

While Joel Alme, a former member of Hästpojken, wrote the new album Away, Away, Away, he has listened a lot to rapper Erik Lundin.

- I like him a lot. You really see him and his world through his lyrics.

It was on the last album, Flyktligan, that Joel Alme switched language from English to Swedish and began to write about his own upbringing in the working class Gothenburg. Since then, he has played a lot in prisons and in addiction care.

- And then I have been thinking a lot about myself, and seen that it could just as well have been me and so I started to write about it.

Why do you think it could just as well have been you?

- Because I come from relationships with a lot of friends and relatives who have both sat inside and had huge abuse problems. Most of my relatives have disappeared because of abuse. And I myself have had problems with addiction and never got any rest in the body ever.

Joel Alme wants to tell us about the people who rarely see and create a greater understanding of why some end up wrong.

- I always talk to my mom about this when you see a bunch, I don't like to use those words, but alcis or a-laws or amphetamines or what people now call them, you always have to see that everyone has been young children at some time: wanted to play in a playground and be safe at home. I grew up with that there is always a reason why they have it that way.

Something Joel Alme has in common with many rappers is that he is proud of his background, after all.

- It's also a thing where I come from, that you shouldn't talk about having a hard time.

Why?

- Because the outside world says it all the time. That you should feel that you come from a certain class and then you feel a resistance and that you instead become more proud of that part. And what has been difficult to write is, then, that you do not want to talk negatively about where you come from, but you protect it in some way.

You want to be loyal?

- Yes. But lately, especially with my previous record, I feel that my family has become more proud of where we come from, that things have gone through.

What has been most difficult, writing about others as you did on the last album or writing about yourself as you do now?

- About myself, I think.

Why?

- You may never have known that you have been worth anything. And then it becomes difficult to give a self-worth in text.

So if you have poor self-esteem, does it feel strange to make an entire album about yourself, even if the album is about having poor self-esteem?

- Yes, it is very step 22, says Joel Alme and laughs.

- You have to fight not to be disgusted by yourself when writing. But also agree that you have done stupid stuff, and bring it.