Lukas Graham's new album 4 (The Pink Album) is out on Friday. It follows 3 (The Purple Album) and his self-titled second release, aka the Blue Album. They all have the same cover — only the colors change. So why pink this time? Lukas says it "represents a more uplifting, more positive color" — a reflection of his music, and his life since he got sober.
"It is a more, I would say, hopeful album than the Purple one was," Lukas tells ABC Audio. "The color pink was chosen also because my daughter Viola thought pink was wonderful. Now she hates it!"
He laughs, "She saw the the vinyl is bright pink and she didn't like it. And I didn't have the heart to tell her that it's pink because she wanted it to be pink!"
As for his sobriety, the "7 Years" singer would "take breaks from drinking or smoking" over the years, but would always end up starting again. The "a-ha" moment for him, he says, came in the fall of 2020, when he realized he was "indulging" in front of his house, all alone, and thought, "This sucks."
He explains, "I just needed some better tools and some like psychological understanding of like who I am…what I want to be and where I want to go. Now that he's sober, the father of two notes, "I'm a better father, I'm a better husband, I'm a better friend…I'm a better son, I'm a better brother."
"It's like, 'O.K., so if I'm better at all these aspects of my life, why would I want to ever go back to the other way of living?'"
The new album includes Lukas' recent duet with Khalid, "Wish You Were Here," as well as guest appearances by Mickey Guyton and G-Eazy.
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