Lukas Graham: Lukas Graham review – the sunny side of hard knock life

Lukas Graham Forchhammer, to give this Danish songwriter/frontman his full name, has scored the biggest hit of 2016 so far with 7 Years. Intriguingly, though, where most listeners hear an earnest, growing-up ballad, Forchhammer and his band hear “ghetto pop”. That’s their term for their music, but it’s not borne out on either the single or this album. There are allusions to a chequered past (or at least chequered friends, such as the troublesome mate he addresses on the racked piano-weeper Better Than Yourself), but most songs show Forchhammer as the product of a stable home, protected by his parents (“I got enough love from my mom and dad,” he sings on Mama Said, backed by a children’s choir that evokes Jay Z’s Hard Knock Life) and popular among his peers. By turns Maroon 5-jaunty and Ed Sheeran-reflective, the album has him making the best of every situation rather than yearning for something better – he even sees the sunny side of his own death, exhorting friends to “party for me, I’d party too” on the gospelish closing track Funeral.