Green & Granstrom Explore Family, Fate and Music with "Stranger With My Face"

Green & Granstrom, the partnership between singer Leyton Green and Swedish songwriter Jimmy Granstrom, continue to gain attention for their heartfelt storytelling and international reach. One of their most personal releases is Stranger With My Face (feat. Omri Lahav), a song inspired by Granstrom’s own family history.

The track tells the story of two brothers who meet for the first time only after their father has died. They were raised in different homes with different mothers. One brother always knew that his father had another child, but he never took the step to make contact and therefore never met his father in person. The other brother grew up with their father, but he never learned that he had a sibling at all. Only once their father was gone did the truth finally come to light.

In Granstrom’s real life, the family picture includes both a half brother and a half sister on his father’s side. For the sake of the song, the story was simplified to focus on two brothers and the unspoken questions that can follow a family for years. It is a reflection on identity, missed chances and the emotional distance that can exist even within close family ties.

The music for Stranger With My Face (feat. Omri Lahav) was composed by Omri Lahav, whose film work includes the soundtracks for the documentary Quiet Explosions and the short film Over My Dead Body. These scores were long listed for Best Original Score for this year’s Oscars, and Over My Dead Body received an Emmy nomination. Lahav’s music has also been featured at the Cannes Festival in May 2022, which gives the track a cinematic and atmospheric character.

Green & Granstrom have listeners across the world, with radio play in the United States, England, Italy, Sweden, Mexico, South Africa and Uganda. Their latest release, Only Summer, highlights another side of their collaborative work. For this single, Granstrom and Robert Gould wrote new English lyrics for Lars Brundin’s Swedish song Alltid sommar (där hon går), composed by Brundin and Herbert Tinz. The original Swedish version has aired on P4 Malmöhus, one of Sweden’s largest regional radio stations. On 8 September 2024, the English adaptation was also played on the SiriusXM The Spectrum programme Nordic Rox, co-hosted by Per Gessle of Roxette.

While Only Summer is the newest chapter in their catalogue, Stranger With My Face (feat. Omri Lahav) remains a defining moment for Green & Granstrom. It brings together true lived experience, considered songwriting and the distinctive musical touch of a composer with a strong background in film. The result is a song that is both deeply personal and widely resonant.