THE GRAMMY CLASS SPEAKS: LUKAS GRAHAM

"7 Years," by Warner Bros. breakout act Lukas Graham, is up for both Record and Song of the Year, so we sat down with frontman Lukas Forchhammer to talk about the song's rise and recognition. This is what he had to say...

INTERVIEW BY SIMON GLICKMAN

What do these Grammy nominations mean to you?
They mean the world. I mean, it’s peers voting for peers, and that’s a big deal to us. Other performers and writers have decided that our song was Grammy-worthy! If it was only audience-based voting, we wouldn’t have a chance in hell, since we are the smallest, most insignificant band on the roster.

Tell us about the creation of “7 Years,” and how the song evolved from idea to hit.
The song was written in 3.5 hours and had a lot of extra lyrics in it that we never used. It was as if the verses for seven, 11, 20, 30 and 60 just felt right together. It’s hard, though, to explain how you make up a song like that. There’s no hook, or it’s all a hook. It reminds me of a Woody Guthrie song and draws on a lot of folky influences.

How has the worldwide response to the song affected your thinking about it?
I’m just happy that other people enjoy the writing and the production of it. When it was first written, I knew it was an amazing piece of music, but I never would have hoped for three Grammy nominations. That is just insane. With or without the great success that it has had worldwide, I would always have loved it for the storytelling and the peculiarity of it; plus I think that my boys aced the production, especially the strings.

Who first inspired you to make music, and who inspires you now?
I started writing lyrics when I was 12, inspired by two Argentinian brothers that I’ve known all my life. Mariano, the older brother, minded my sisters and I when we were kids, and he was making rap music with his younger brother, Mauro. They moved back to Argentina in the mid-’90s; in 2009, as a 20-year-old, I went and lived with them in Buenos Aires for five months, writing my first songs and exploring my lyrical skills. But my father was probably the biggest inspiration in terms of our sound, because he played me so much different music.

What’s the one thing you’d most like Americans to know about Denmark?
The difference in culture is so strikingly huge that picking out one thing is almost as impossible as it is ludicrous. But since you ask, I’d say our free school, university and healthcare in exchange for high taxes is pretty neat.