Lukas Graham was born on a couch in a squatted army base with no toilet, in a Copenhagen commune where his dad booked folk musicians and threw parties with live bands, and where the music filled the family kitchen. Turns out it took four albums, three GRAMMY nods, and one breakout ballad to get back to that kitchen table.
Good Times, out now via Virgin Music Group, is Graham's fifth record and by far his most personal detour—a 13-track return to the Celtic and folk roots that raised him, before "7 Years" turned him into a global pop fixture with a spot in Spotify's earliest Billions Club. The inspiration, he says, was never complicated. "The music I grew up listening to in my parents' kitchen, and the live bands at the parties my dad used to throw," he explains. "I always write songs from where I am in my life, and Good Times is a nostalgic look at what I've been through and where I am now."
This time, there's no chasing the algorithm. "I feel like I'm at an age now where I just want to release music I really like without wondering if it will impress anyone," he says. "It's a nice place to be."
That freedom shows up as an actual guest list. Graham didn't just write folk-inspired songs, he called on the folk community that raised him. "I insisted on getting a whole lot of people I know to record on this album, people I got to know through my father. In my opinion, real folk music legends," he explains. That means uilleann pipe virtuoso Michael McGoldrick, bassist Sam Grisman, mandolin player Tim O'Brien, fiddler Stuart Duncan, and guitarist Brian Sutton—a lineup Graham describes with disarming plainness: "People my dad knew. People who had slept on a couch in my mum and dad's living room."
Even his own team wasn't ready for what that lineup would produce. "I think it took my executive producer and the producers by surprise how much amazing stuff came out of that," Graham says before singling out a McGoldrick moment. "Especially when I got my friend Michael McGoldrick to play Irish bag pipes on the title track 'Good Times.'"
Logistically, the whole thing was a mess in the best way. Graham still lives in Copenhagen; everyone else he wanted on the record does not. "The fact that I still live in Copenhagen, Denmark, while the rest of my collaborators are scattered across the U.S., lol," he says of the album's biggest challenge. "So it's been written, recorded and produced in New York, Nashville, Copenhagen, and L.A."—the record as frequent flyer program.
The emotional center, though, is "Freetown Road," Graham's ode to Christiania, the free-spirited Copenhagen commune where he grew up and where his late father Eugene—a Donegal-born folk enthusiast—first exposed him to the music that shaped this entire project. It's the song he's most excited for fans to hear, and he doesn't romanticize the neighborhood behind it. "Where I was born on a couch in a house without a toilet or a bathroom, and where the police came in wearing riot gear and shooting teargas all over the place," he says, matter-of-fact about the chaos that raised him.
Then there's "Before You Go"—the album's quietest gut-punch, written for his late friend Thomas, who asked Graham to hold the song until he was ready to share it. He never got to hear it released; he asked Graham to sing it at his funeral instead, where it was performed publicly for the first time in the same church where Graham had buried his father. It's since become a fixture of his live show. "It's a song that's meant to be sung along to," Graham said in a statement, "even though nobody knows it yet."
He traces all of it back to the same source. "Musically it's inspired by my Irish heritage and so is the songwriting," he says.
For an album built on so much specific, load-bearing grief and history, Graham is oddly hands-off about what it's supposed to mean once it leaves his hands. "I hope folks will be able to hear/see their own life's story in some of these songs, instead of thinking about what they mean to me," he says. "I'm excited about what they make other people feel. Once it's out, the songs are sort of not mine anymore, but everyone's."
As for the man behind the record, he's happy to keep the mythology to a minimum. "I like to cook, I hate running, play no instruments, and have no clue what keys I sing in," he offers—which, for a GRAMMY-nominated artist five albums deep, is either the most punk thing imaginable or just refreshingly honest.
Good Times arrived one day before Graham joined Ed Sheeran for 15 dates on the 2026 Loop Tour across North America. And he's not slowing down from there. "Looking forward to performing more concerts all over the world," he says—proof that even a guy who doesn't know his own key can still carry a tune around the globe.
Good Times is out now, listen here.
Photos by Frederik Barasinski
