Mads Langer

Born in 1984 in the northern Danish town of Skive, multi-instrumentalist Mads Langer had already built a reputation as a singer and songwriter both at home and farther afield. His brooding, emotionally direct style, reminiscent of Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke, took shape through childhood hours spent at the piano and in a Rage Against the Machine covers band. After finishing school he relocated to Copenhagen to enroll at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, and soon afterward secured a recording contract with Copenhagen Records, the same imprint that later launched Alphabeat. Although his 2006 debut album Attention Please achieved only modest sales, influential promoter Sat Bisla spotted his potential, arranged early international shows, and encouraged Langer to relocate to New York.

A year of performing at industry showcases on both coasts convinced him to return to Skive, where he funded his own acoustic tour across Europe. The trek strengthened his audience and gave him an outlet for the many new songs he was writing during that fertile stretch. His 2009 self-titled follow-up presented a more refined set of material and production values than the debut. The introspective single “Fact-fiction” became his first Danish Top 20 entry, while a stark, guitar-led reinterpretation of Olive’s mid-’90s track “You’re Not Alone” marked his initial commercial breakthrough abroad, reaching charts in Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany. That recording’s extended European run owed much to its appearance on Behold, the album Langer cut in London after signing with Sony Music in 2011. In 2012 he scored his first Danish number-one single with “Overgir mig Langsomt,” and the following year the buoyant, synth-inflected In These Waters topped the national album chart.