SOURCE: https://youtu.be/LHCob76kigA
Lukas Graham is a Danish soul-pop band comprising vocalist Lukas Graham Forchhammer, bassist Magnus “Magnúm” Larsson, keyboardist Kasper Daugaard and drummer Mark “Lovestick” Falgren. Their self-titled debut album went quadruple-platinum in Denmark and yielded three Top 5 singles, including the chart-topping “Drunk in the Morning.” That success caught the attention of Warner Bros. Records who signed them in 2013.
Graham’s upbringing is reflected in this song: He was raised in a Copenhagen commune and smoked weed for the first time when he was 12. His father died in 2012, triggering an introspective period that led him to this song.
This piano-led, mid-tempo track was their first Europe-wide hit, topping the charts in several countries including Austria, Denmark and Sweden.
The song follows the progression of Lukas Graham Forchhammer, from making friends aged 7 to at 60 when he hopes he will “have a lot of children who will hold me.”
Much of the song is autobiographical:
“I always had that dream like my daddy before me
So I started writing songs, I started writing stories
something about that glory just always seemed to bore me
Cause only those I really love will ever really know me”
Lukas Graham wrote on Genius: “Despite (or perhaps because of) his early success as an actor and singer (he toured worldwide as a member of the Copenhagen Boys Choir), Lukas has never been enamoured with the trappings of fame. His focus is not on the fans and hangers-on that are attracted to his fame, but instead on the people who truly matter.”
Lukas Graham performed “7 Years” on the December 10, 2015 episode of Conan. When the late-night show unveiled its end-of-year viewers’ poll, the band’s performance of the song received a massive 98.86 percent share of the vote.
The sound of a film projector comes in during the quite parts of this song, including the intro. This gives it a nostalgic feel as if watching home movies.
When this climbed to #1 on the UK singles chart for the week ending February 18, 2016, Lukas Graham became the third Danish act to reach the top position. The previous two were Whigfield in 1994 with “Saturday Night” and Aqua with “Barbie Girl” in 1997, “Doctor Jones” in 1998 and “Turn Back Time” in 1999. (It should be noted that Aqua’s singer Lene actually hails from Norway).
Frontman Lukas Graham explained the song’s message to Radio.com: “The song’s basically just about becoming a good father, and being such a good father that your children would want to come and visit you when you’re an old, boring man,” he said. “I had a really, really cool father, so that’s what I wanna be too.
“A lot of older people are actually very, very young,” he continued. “And they look at their age as some stamp that now they can point fingers at all the people that are younger than them; in reality I am probably a lot smarter than some of them anyway, at least. I’ve read more books; I’ve tried more stuff; I’ve seen more things.”
“And I think that’s why I can write a song like ‘Seven Years,’ because I might only be 27, but I know what my dreams are,” Graham concluded. “I knew when I was a young man that I wanted to be a father, and I knew I was gonna be a good father at that.”
The lyrics touch on Lukas Graham Forchhammer’s upbringing when at the age of 11, he was “smoking herb and drinking burning liquor.”
Graham believes the reason the song is a hit is because he didn’t hold back about some of the unsavory things he did as a kid. “I think that’s what a lot of people are connecting with,” he pointed out to ABC Radio. “I’m being blatantly honest about the mistakes I’ve made in my life – not that I would say it’s a mistake, I’d do it all again if I got the chance, ’cause that’s why I’m here.”
“The reason why you love someone is not because you agree with everything they do, it’s because you may not necessarily agree, but you still love them,” Graham added. “I think we just need to get to a point where people aren’t as judgmental as they are right now.”
“7 Years” was the first UK #1 single to feature a numeric character in the title since Duke Dumont’s “Need U (100%)” reached the peak position in April 2013.
At the Grammy Awards in 2017, the band played this with Kelsea Ballerini, who traded vocals with Graham, singing parts of her song “Peter Pan” to create a mashup.
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