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"  Anna Ternheim may be only 31, but with the release of her third album, Leaving on a Mayday, the flaxen-haired Swedish chanteuse bares to the world her old soul. A lyric-driven, viscerally wistful album, Mayday was produced by Ternheim&amp;#039;s friend Bj\u00F6rn Yttling of Peter Bjorn and John, whom she met while both were playing clubs in Stockholm. This is the first time the two have worked together, and understandably Ternheim was nervous about it, but ultimately there was nothing to worry about. &amp;quot;We hit it off [in the studio] right away; it went extremely well,&amp;quot; says Ternheim. &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#039;t really disagree on anything.&amp;quot; Ternheim chatted with us from Sweden about the new album, what inspires her, and what NSFW part of the male anatomy her Swedish Grammys resemble.  How did you first get into playing music?  Well, I think it started with me just getting a guitar when I was 11.  Did you ask for it?   No, I wanted to play the piano, and I think my parents were just being smart, convincing me that the guitar was better because you can carry it around with you and that&amp;#039;s more fun. And I guess it was easier for them. I got the guitar and it just clicked right away. I started taking guitar lessons, learned a couple of chords, and started writing songs immediately after the first guitar lesson I ever took.  What was the first song you ever wrote with lyrics\u2014do you remember?   Yeah, it was a Swedish song about mountains. The first couple of songs were inspired by Swedish folk music. Storytelling, you know. For the first couple of years, I wrote in Swedish, and it was later on when I moved to the States and went to school for a year, when I was 17, that I started writing songs in English.  Do you now write exclusively in English?   Yeah, ever since then I have. I&amp;#039;ve written a few songs and I&amp;#039;ve sung a few songs in Swedish, and it&amp;#039;s very different. I feel very free when I write in English. Also because I have to keep it simple and just say things the way I know how to say them.  And it&amp;#039;s available to a wider audience when you write in English.   Yes, definitely. And I always wanted to tour outside of Sweden to make my music known to a broader audience.  Did you have any musical idols growing up?   I did. I grew up with my father&amp;#039;s record collection. There was everything from the Sex Pistols to Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. And then also Swedish folk music and Swedish jazz. I can listen to anything that has a good, strong melody.   Your lyrics, especially on this album, are like little stories. What inspires you to write?    The reason why I started is that I think I just suck up what&amp;#039;s going on around me with the people I know. My friends, my family, things that affect me outside of my life. As long as I feel inspired, I think writing is very intuitive. And it&amp;#039;s also a way of spending time, of just being. Time disappears when I write.  You&amp;#039;re going on tour here soon. What do you miss most about home when you&amp;#039;re out on the road?   I miss not being home. I&amp;#039;m making peace with that, because a big part of my time and the work is touring. And I love playing my concerts, but I have a hard time being away from home, wherever home might be, because I move a lot. I think I have a two-sided nature there. I need both. I think I&amp;#039;m getting better at having a small base and needing few things.  You have a great personal style. I especially liked the bracelets that you wore at the Joe&amp;#039;s Pub show in June. They looked like Wonder Woman bracelets.   Oh, I&amp;#039;m glad you did. They were designed for me specially by my cousin, a Swedish artist named \u00C5sa Skogberg. She&amp;#039;s a silversmith. I like working with her; she&amp;#039;s helped me in the past with jewelry.  You&amp;#039;ve already won a couple of Grammys in Sweden for Leaving on a Mayday. Where do you keep them?   Well, I gave them to my parents. It&amp;#039;s strange, prizes. All of a sudden you get a prize and you don&amp;#039;t know why. It&amp;#039;s good because it has helped me in my career over here. It&amp;#039;s like, you do the same thing for many years and all of a sudden you do something that people find out about and you get a prize. It&amp;#039;s amazing.  Does it look like the Grammy in the United States?  No, it&amp;#039;s a statue. They had the same prize for several years\u2014it was a designer that did it, and you can put it on a wall. And now the past few years a female artist did it in glass. It looks like a tower. Or a phallus. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/a10418/anna-ternheim-340506/?click=smart&kw=ist&src=smart&mag=ELM&link=-SMT-ELM>