Starfucker, uh, Saturday: Sondre Lerche

Probably you’ve noticed by now here on Starfucker Friday that there’s one specific type of guy that gets my hormones racing. I go for pale, solid, and scruffy, preferably in the 35 to 40 age range. I can’t help it, it’s just what I like. Which not to say that I’d necessarily say no to a barely legal boy—or his grandfather, for that matter—but generally I like them a little bit older than me and with some meat on their bones.
That’s why it’s all the weirder that the single hottest musician I’ve ever seen is Sondre Lerche: he’s a little younger than me; he’s a little bit on the twinky side; he has no facial hair. But the Norwegian singer-songwriter who is so smokin’ hot that I literally giggle and blush when confronted with him.

(Sexy even in terrible polo/long-sleeve tee combos.)

If you’ve never seen Lerche (pronounced LAIR-kay) before, you can catch him here or here, or in the closing credits to Dan In Real Life, the new Peter Hedges movie that I’ll be talking about a lot in my next post. Lerche did all the music for the film, and makes a guest appearance during the end credits to sing Modern Nature, the happy love duet off his first album, Faces Down.

(If I’m not mistaken his wife brought a Playboy to the Dan In Real Life premiere.)

I saw him live for the first time back when that album came out at TT the Bear’s in Boston. It was his first ever show in the US. He sang Modern Nature by himself and asked the audience to sing along with the girl part. The crowd, most of whom were Norwegian and knew who he was already, all immediately started singing along. But, like, in falsetto. Kinda like a children’s choir, in a way. It was really weird, but Lerche seemed impressed. He smiled a lot, which was cute. Really cute. He’s got a lot of personality and his between-song banter was consistently funny and cute. Really cute.

(Sometimes I accidentally chew on my hoodie strings, too!)

That show was the first time I heard Johnny Johnny Oh Oh, an unreleased track that I was obsessed with for the next few years, until he put it out on his most recent album and I was sort of disappointed in the production. (Sorry about the shitty link, by the way, it’s the best I could find.) I asked him about the song that night, since he always hangs out after his shows to meet people and sign CDs and stuff. I waited in a line of Norwegians to shake his hand, kind of twittering the whole time, which is completely not like me. He was taller up close than I had thought, and, like I said, when I shook his hand I giggled and blushed like a 12-year old girl who just won a date with Ne-Yo.

(He’s so much hotter than Oprah!)

Faces Down, the album he was supporting, is good, but it doesn’t have the charm of his live shows. Sleep On Needles is an awesome song—so is You Know So Well–but as a whole the album’s a little lacking in pizzazz. Although since he was only 19 when the album came out, there was a lot of potential, especially since his label (EMI) wasn’t trying to turn him into a teen idol. His second release in the US, the live/acoustic Don’t Be Shallow EP, is a step above the album (and remains the best thing he ever came out with, if you ask me.) The solo versions of Sleep On Needles and Night and Day (the Cole Porter song) show off how awesome his guitar-pickin’ is, and the back cover of the album has a really tiny picture of him wearing A SLEEVELESS SHIRT. Oh my gosh, did I pee myself when I saw that HE HAS REALLY CUTE UPPER ARMS, even in a picture that’s only about half an inch square. And click here to see him perform Don’t Be Shallow along with obviously-scripted foreign-language hijinks.)

(Bigger version of the picture. Thanks, last.fm!)

His next album, Two-Way Monologue, was a little bit of a disappointment—the production made the songs sound a little too much the same, although the title track (the best song on the album) does have a video featuring more than one of him. OMG, the fantasies that sparked! Around this time I think I also saw the first picture of him with his shirt off from his US tour with Liz Phair (double hot!), which was exciting even though I probably wouldn’t have even noticed it if I saw it on DList or something. I saw him again touring for that album (on my birthday, no less), and once again shook his hand while cartoon hearts floated around my head and I mumbled something about how I liked him with a full band at least as much as I liked him playing solo. Then he flirted with my friend Stacey and I decided I’d really like to see him have sex with a girl almost as much as I’d like to see him have sex with me. (He’s married to a model, by the way.)

(Sondre Lerche wants YOU. And by you I mean me.)

At the beginning of this year he put out his fourth full album, Phantom Punch. (I’ll leave out the part where he did a jazz combo thing in 2005, because it wasn’t such a good idea, although the one time I ever downloaded somebody’s itunes celebrity playlist, it was his from around this time. It has terrible Donald Fagan on it, but also one of my favorite Paul Simon songs, 1 Thing by Amerie, and one of my favorite guilty pleasures.) It’s a good album, possibly his best full-length, but it still doesn’t wow me the same way as seeing him live.

(younger Sondre. Note the early use of the bandana.)
His foppish hair. His blue eyes. His Debbie Harry-esque round flat head and kind of pointy chin. The way he can sing in falsetto better than most men. The way he doesn’t approve of douchy Astralwerks putting FBI copyright warnings all over all their albums. His habit of wearing bandanas around his neck in press pictures. His guitar-playing . His dimples. I can’t pinpoint what part of him makes me want him to tear my clothes off and force me to watch while he screws his wife. It must be some magical combination of all those things that makes me pop wood as soon as I hear anybody pronounce his name correctly.

(*NB: I just checked and he’s playing in Boston again! Tomorrow! But I have no money! Shit! Shit shit shit! What do I do?)