FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Laufey

FEATURE:

Spotlight: Revisited

Laufey

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AN artist who is…

PHOTO CREDIT: Cara Kealy

simply extraordinary and someone I spotlighted back in 2023, I am returning to Laufey now. The Icelandic-Chinese musician, born Laufey Lín Jónsdótti, released her new album, A Matter of Time, in August. I am going to end this feature by including a review of a standout from this year. One of the most acclaimed of the year for sure, if you have not heard of Laufey, then you really do need to check her out. Rather than repeat interviews I included in 2023, I am going to get to some more recent ones. Some from this year. Laufey’s debut album, Everything I Know About Love, came out in 2022, though her debut single arrived in 2020. That was Street by Street. Some might say she is pretty established by now. With a massive social media following and a huge tour currently underway, this is a major artist. However, this feature is about revisiting someone I spotlighted when they were rising. It is amazing to come back to Laufey. Music Week chatted with her in August. As we learn from the start of the interview, last year was a pretty eventful and memorable one for Laufey:

“Laufey ticked off everything she’d ever dreamed of in 2024, the sort of phenomenal year that has required the 25-year-old to draw up a new bucket list. She won a Grammy, something that felt so outlandish for her that it never even figured in her thinking when it came to lifetime goals, and played headline shows at her all-time favourite venues (Royal Albert Hall, Hollywood Bowl, Radio City Music Hall). Tick, tick, tick.

Along the way, the artist born Laufey Jónsdóttir in Reykjavik to a Chinese mother and Icelandic father began to mull over what success actually meant. She discovered that when you’re an ambitious type, as Laufey undoubtedly is, you’re always looking for the next bigger thing.

“That’s how I got to where I am,” she says. “Once I have played the 1,000-cap venue in a city, I’m excited to play the 4,000-cap venue the next year.”

But she followed this thread and wondered, where does it end?

“I’ll hopefully be playing arenas soon,” she states. “And I don’t want to play venues bigger than an arena, so it’s going to have to stop somewhere.”

Laufey’s remarkable rise is showing very few signs of slowing down, though. She is the ultimate modern trailblazer and Gen Z superstar, someone for whom there are no clear forebears to measure herself against. There have been pop artists signed to independent labels before, but not independent pop artists whose music is rooted in ye olde world classical and jazz sounds, her music giving the Great American Songbook a new twist. No one had that down as the next big thing in pop and yet, with almost 14 million monthly listeners on Spotify and nearly 650m plays for 2023 hit From The Start – not to mention 7.8m followers and 293m likes on TikTok – here we are”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Erlendur Sveinsson

I am moving to an interview from The Guardian. At a time when Laufey’s stock is rising and she is vulnerable to haters, Laufey discussed this. She also talked about filling arenas, and how she was slightly scared of success. It is a pivotal time for her. One where she has gained this whole new legion of fans and put some new music out. An artist who has to balance how much of her personal life she puts into the music:

“Now Laufey is keen to rough up her reputation as gen-Z’s favourite jazz savant, at least a little. Her new album A Matter of Time splits the difference between sugar-plum symphonics with imperfect notes and vocals that crack with emotion. One song has jolting strings that she compares to a scream. “I wanted to make more of a statement on this album,” she says. “I’ve become known as a bit of a soft singer. I am that, but I also want to show parts of myself that aren’t that pretty.”

She arrived in the hotel lobby this morning on time and as neat as a pin, with a cardigan-wearing bunny rabbit dangling from her handbag. (The critter, named Mei Mei, is Laufey’s mascot and alias of sorts – she releases alternative versions of her songs under its name, and it is also available to buy, with a portion of the proceeds aiding music education as part of the Laufey Foundation.) “Do you want to go in there?” she asks, leading me into a side room and getting out the best biscuits: “It’s the guests-only lounge.” The place is done up like a hunting lodge, with artfully oxidised mirrors, a wall-mounted antelope head and, most bizarrely, given that it is summer, a burning log fire. When I comment on the strangeness, Laufey says, wryly: “Well, it’s now reached a very cool 24 degrees.”

She says she was driven by a “hunger” to imbue the new experiences of a whirlwind few years into her new album. It radiates a sense of adventure, dovetailing between twangy campfire country to swoony ballads and sherbert-spiked pop. The record is produced by Laufey and longtime collaborator Spencer Stewart: between them, they can play just about any instrument you have heard of, as well as some you may not have. I was unfamiliar with the celesta, an obscure kind of idiophone that Stewart and Laufey play on the record (it sounds like a child’s musical jewellery box). On the Busby Berkeley-worthy confection Lover Girl, she knowingly leans into her Cupid-struck image, while on Carousel, Laufey reckons with inviting a partner into her circus-like life while a seasick accordion plays. The rapturous Forget-Me-Not, recorded with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (for which she was a teenage cello soloist), is her most accomplished work of composition to date; her voice soars among flurries of flutes.

“I wanted the album to reflect all sides of my emotional scale,” she says, huddling in air-con that has apparently been set to “Himalayan”. “Within one day, I will have a happy hour and a crying hour. I have no interest in making an album that’s one vibe throughout.” But there is, she says, an emotional through-line about learning to accept yourself while falling in love with someone else. She won’t talk about her relationship status today though, and I ask if internet scrutiny makes it hard to write candidly about her dating experiences. “There’s always a line of ambiguity,” Laufey says, before smiling mischievously. “But if you get into a situation with me, you kind of know that I might write about it.”

A Matter of Time marks her creative world opening up. Two spry new songs were created with Taylor Swift collaborator and the National founder member Aaron Dessner at his Long Pond Studios, in an experience that Laufey says “opened a third musical eye”. And she is more lighthearted than ever on Mr Eclectic, a bossa nova-inspired track featuring Clairo that pokes fun at men who mansplain classical music to her. “I just think it’s funny to be the type of man who performatively reads a beaten-up paperback outside a coffee shop,” she says, her nose wrinkling. “I’ve dated guys like that, but this is a forever type of man. Why do you think all philosophers are men? They just had the platform and the audacity”.

The last interview I am including is from ELLE. As she reveals in the interview, her audience very much are a reflection of her. She can look out at them and see people that relate to her and who give her strength. This is someone whose music has clearly connected with so many people across the world. I am excited to see what comes next for Laufey. An artist I have been following for a while, she is one of these artists who will not get the same fanfare and attention as the biggest Pop artists in the mainstream. I think Laufey’s music is stronger and goes deeper. Maybe that sort of exposure and spotlight would be too intimidating and exposing:

“Women obviously create great music every year, but the last year felt like a notable moment when they were really dominating the mainstream. How did that feel for you?

I just think it’s such an incredible time to be a woman in music. It’s not only that women are dominating, but that they’re dominating in every single little corner of music as well. Everyone is so different. Doechii is making completely different music from Sabrina Carpenter. And Sabrina, Chappell Roan, and Charli xcx are pop princesses, but in such completely different ways. That is really, really beautiful, and it speaks to how modern audiences are so open to different types of music. I think women are more versatile than we’re given credit for. That’s the main thing that stood out to me this past year....Though I’m so happy with the progress that women have made in music and how much they’ve been in the forefront of driving culture, there’s such a long way to go when it comes to women in the background.

Why is it important to uplift women songwriters and producers?

You can really see when there’s a woman writing with a woman, the magic that it creates, because there’s a level of honesty. Like, a man could never get into my head, never understand what I’m going through. That’s one of the main reasons that female producers and writers should be highlighted, because nobody understands the female experience like a woman.

How do you feel about being called “Gen Z’s jazz icon”?

It’s weird, because I don’t really see myself as one genre or the other. I think when I started, I needed something to tell people. I’m a trained jazz singer, and when I was younger, before I started writing music, I only sang jazz music. I started my career singing jazz standards on TikTok, so I could see why that would be the thing that people gravitated toward saying. But as I’ve grown as a songwriter and a musician, it’s so much more than that.

How would you describe your fan base?

They are genuinely the funniest people I know. They’re so kind. Growing up, I really struggled finding a group of people that I really understood and that understood me—whether that was coming from mixed cultural backgrounds, or having mixed interests that weren’t as simple as soccer or reading. The fact that I’ve kind of summoned an audience of exactly that—it just makes my younger self really, really happy.

For fandoms, there’s this stereotype of crazy fan behavior and cultlike behavior. And though they’re [Laughs] definitely, in a way, a cult, it’s a really, really positive, happy, cute one. Very wholesome. I very, very rarely see or experience toxic behavior. It seems very friendly. I’ve heard so many stories of fans making friends with each other at concerts. It’s the best part of being a musician.

They look like me. I look out into the audience, and I just see direct reflections of me. I didn’t think I could ever gather such a big audience of Wasians. I didn’t know that was possible, but somehow it is.

They dress like me, too. Oh, my God, when it’s little girls, they’re so adorable. I feel such an immense joy, but also a deep understanding of what I am to them and how I should carry myself. It really gets me through anything”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Adrienne Raquel

Prior to wrapping things up, I will get to a positive review for A Matter of Time. One of the best albums of this year, this award-winning artist no doubt will be in the conversation when it comes to next year’s GRAMMYs. The review I want to include is a 9/10 from The Line of Best Fit. They heralded a multitalented artist who is one of the most exceptional in all of music. A big reason why I wanted to revisit her music a couple of years since I spotlighted her:

“It wouldn’t be enough for Laufey to merely establish herself as a singer, lyricist, multi-instrumentalist, and aesthete. She insisted upon being exceptionally prolific at it.

Impacting with Typical of Me (2022), her debut extended play, Laufey captured critics and record buyers alike. Then over the next three years, she continued developing her sound – rich and sonorous – across another triptych of EPs, two live albums, and a pair of acclaimed full-length studio efforts, Everything I Know About Love (2022) and Bewitched (2023). These discs consolidated additional reviewer praise and grew her reach on the charts.

Bewitched earned an inaugural GRAMMY Award (“Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album”) in 2024, bringing her to the notice of the ultimate songstress herself: Barbra Streisand. Currently, Laufey features amongst a decorated roster lining Streisand’s 37th long player The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume 2 (2025). Despite this vertiginous rise, Laufey conserves her music’s core: a traditional-to-modern pop fusion curated from a complex mix of jazz, classical, acoustic, and bossa nova. It’s the ideal canvas for her voice and songwriting on third album A Matter of Time.

She refines her formula enlisting the talents of Spencer Stewart and Aaron Dessner to produce.

Dessner – one of the founders of the indie-rock clique The National – is fire-new to Laufey’s orbit; his tunesmithing on a few of Taylor Swift’s recent releases has only yielded him further renown. Stewart’s work history with Laufey on Everything I Know About Love and Bewitched makes him a welcome figure on this affair. Laufey joins them as a co-producer, partial arranger and session hand. Her way with piano, cello, electric bass, celeste, wood block, upright bass, and more (see the sleeve notes for details) demonstrate her keen abilities.

The three musicians spare no expense maintaining the filmic grandeur her projects have become known for. It casts A Matter of Time as a spellbinding experience for any audiophile. Opener “Clockwork” is a decadent slice of big band nostalgia, indicative of the quality one can expect.

Even better, there’s a deepening of Laufey’s unique, aforementioned fusion throughout. The drums feel more punctuated with “A Cautionary Tale”, the guitar-strumming feels balmier on “Castle In Hollywood”, and the strings zing just a little bit more via “Forget-Me-Not”. All these particulars are revealed with that introductory listen and will make any subsequent visit to this set as exciting as that initial spin. This method reaches a beautiful crescendo on “Cuckoo Ballet”, an instrumental reprise of A Matter of Time’s first six selections; it recalls “Nocturne”, an antecedent version of “Cuckoo Ballet” on Bewitched, but with its compositional contrast set to a brighter tone here.

Alongside Laufey’s signature styles are some fresh motifs too. The record’s lead-off single “Silver Lining” is all brushed drums, reverb, and assorted torch spice evoking the likes of Dionne Warwick or Nancy Wilson. Laufey wraps this tune around her handsome alto with an uncanny poise. “Tough Luck” begins in downbeat pop-rock fashion before flowing into a slinky, disco-lite groove with chamber pop effects. Echoes of the countrypolitan past (Emmylou Harris) and present (Maren Morris) are gorgeously realized on “Clean Air”. Laufey also dips into the adult alternative of fellow Icelander Björk circa Selmasongs (2000) on “Sabotage”. In this collision of experimental and classical pop, it is notably the economy of her voice that is its most stunning feature.

As the lead writer on every cut for A Matter of Time, Laufey continues to thread a mean needle with thematic elements. Whether it’s romance in full bloom (“Carousel”) or wilted (“Too Little, Too Late”), Laufey demonstrates that love often exists somewhere between the poles of escapism and reality.

This is done brilliantly on sister cuts “Lover Girl” and “Mr. Eclectic”. The former captures the blush of attraction before the latter uncovers evidence of incompatibility. Both are sequestered as the second and twelfth entries on the wax, respectively. The expanse between each gives them a chance to narratively breathe on their own while remaining linked as Brazilian rhythm-backed exotica.

However, the best tendered script on A Matter of Time is “Snow White”, an examination of Laufey's Icelandic-Chinese heritage and its associated societal pressures. She had approached this topic before with “Letter to My Thirteen Year Old Self” on Bewitched. This time, Laufey explores what she’s endured and her growth thereafter.

To my ear, Laufey is an emergent retro-modernist genius on par with Swing Out Sister, Pizzicato Five, Raphael Saadiq, and Emma Bunton. While their genres differ, that commitment to consistency, craft and “something old made spectacularly new” unites them. Similarly, Laufey colours both inside and outside her established lines to create a joyful tension on A Matter of Time. It makes for the boldest chapter in her artistic story yet”.

Laufey will play in the U.K. next year. She has a large fanbase here. And so many nations around the world. Her music is universal, but also there are these personal moments that take you to the heart of Laufey. She puts herself in the music, though she is aware of being judged or putting too much of herself out there. I would recommend everyone follow Laufey. The twenty-six-year-old is…