Peter Sandberg calls himself 'just a chill guy from Sweden, basically, that plays piano all day long'. That chill guy has, by his own count, almost 700 million streams on Spotify, and his track 'Deep' plays in the season 3 finale of Stranger Things. He was diagnosed with ADHD at eight or nine and struggled at school, until he found the piano at 12. His dad, his first teacher, started him on a boogie-woogie Jingle Bells one Christmas break, and Peter played it so often that the family begged his dad to teach him something else. His latest album, Temporary Coexistence of Humans, came out on 1 May 2026, and this month he plays Berlin, Hamburg, London, Utrecht and Paris.
The life pivot
Music started as Peter's own way of coping. The piano gave all that extra energy somewhere to go, and he wrote calm piano pieces to help himself focus. Then Stranger Things used his music. He and his wife watched the episode from their own sofa, and suddenly people were eager to find out who had made it. The music he wrote to calm himself down now calms other people, and they write to tell him so. In his words, 'it's such a rewarding feeling having that circle being closed.'
What stood out
What I loved in this conversation was how grounded Peter is. His three kids don't care about his Stranger Things sync or his streams. They just want him to be part of their lives, and he calls them his anchor.
He also told me the story behind the new album. On the London Underground, where his Swedish phone gets no signal, he started watching the strangers around him: whole lives that line up for five minutes and never cross again. One track comes from a teenage girl standing in a train doorway, who had clearly been crying but was holding it together. He wanted to ask if she was OK, talked himself out of it, and still regrets it.
For the record, the man whose music calms people down for a living once dreamt a beautiful theme for a full orchestra, sang it into his phone half asleep, and played it back the next day to find tuneless mumbling. We've all been there. And his running playlist includes Elton John's I'm Still Standing, which he rates as essential running music. Whatever keeps him running up that hill.
Catch him live
- Berlin, Colosseum, 16 October
- Hamburg, Halle 424, with Moritz Fasbender, 17 October
- London, Jazz Cafe, 20 October
- Utrecht, TivoliVredenburg, 21 October
- Paris, Les Trois Baudets, 22 October
In this episode
- Being diagnosed with ADHD at eight or nine, and how the piano gave his energy somewhere to go
- The boogie-woogie Jingle Bells that drove his family mad one Christmas
- Building songs like Lego, and the title track he recorded in one take
- The girl on the train who inspired a track on his new album
- Watching Stranger Things play his music, and why his three kids keep him grounded
- Why everybody needs to calm down
#lifepivots