F  L  A  U  N  T

When I played Laufey’s album in my car last week, I was no longer anxiously swerving through lanes on Sunset Boulevard. I suddenly found myself transported into a 1920’s jazz bar straight out of an old Hollywood movie. You know those scenes—there’s a vaudeville-esque singer draped over the piano, men crowded around the bar with massive cigars, a cloud of smoke and dark red light set the mood. You see what I’m seeing, right? 

Modern jazz performer Laufey just set off on an international tour for her August album, which started in San Diego on September 13. Laufey, known for tracks like “Valentine” and “Like the Movies,” hits cities like Houston, Atlanta, New York, and Chicago before heading to Europe in late October. Laufey has already been praised by fellow Gen Z stars Billie Eilish and Willow Smith and acclaimed by critics who say she’s an “effortless blend of old and new” and “2022s answer to Ella Fitzgerald.”

That’s Laufey. The 23-year-old Chinese Icelandic singer is proudly time traveling back a couple of decades to revive jazz and classical music for the younger generations. As someone of the same age group as Laufey, I’ll admit that my jazz knowledge is scant. Yeah, I watched La La Land in theaters and my parents took me to New Orleans once in high school, but Laufey’s sound isn’t anything I’m used to listening to. It’s better. Her relatable, deeply poignant lyrics enmeshed with her gorgeous voice and skillful piano and cello playing make her sound addictive. 

As a rising star in the pandemic, Laufey found a following on Instagram and TikTok. Fast forward a couple of months, and the ever-so-talented artist is embarking on her first tour. Just recently, she released her debut album entitled “Everything I Know About Love,” a melodic yet relatable thirteen-track setlist. I had the chance to sit down with the artist to chat about her journey with music and what’s to come. 

What’s your earliest memory of making music?

I think my most distinct, early memory is standing in the living room practicing on my first little violin– it was the first instrument that I ever received.  I remember practicing and my fingers really hurting and my feet really hurting because I was standing on a rough carpet. And I was just really over it. But that wasn't that serious… I really started playing piano when I was four and playing cello when I was eight… I kind of rejected violin. But, music has always been in my world. There was just always someone practicing at home, someone playing music… it was everything we talked about.

In the past couple of years, you began to share your music through social media. What was it like using the internet to rise to fame? 

Being a musician on the internet is a very different concept than it was a couple of years ago. I think, a couple of years ago, there was a big split between internet musicians and musicians that were considered more serious. Whereas now, I came up during the pandemic, I had no choice, right? And now with TikTok, everybody has to become an internet musician and know how to use social media, and I don't think that's a bad thing at all. I think it's such a wonderful thing because it gives so much power back to the musician. You have a direct connection to your audience, and your audience will always be yours, no matter who you're working with. I think the internet gives so much power to a musician and allows for agency over your own business, so I think that’s really great.

You’re releasing your debut album! Tell me about your first big project. 

It's crazy! It's really cool to see all of the reactions. My music is definitely a little bit on the old-fashioned side. And I haven't really seen people release music in this way—that is jazzy or has even classical elements to it. So, I didn't really know what to expect with how it would be received by my generation. It's been really cool to see that it's been included among the general pop releases. It hasn’t been pigeonholed into any kind of jazz world or anything like that, which was exactly the goal. I want to introduce this music as something that's for the general public and not just for some separate part of the world that understands a certain kind of music. I'm doing this project with the goal of bringing classical or jazz music back to my generation and Gen Z. I knew that getting to this younger generation would be more of a challenge, and I had no clue how it would be taken on, but it's really cool to see that the majority of my listenership is young.

What was the recording process like? I’m curious about the transition from making music out of your bedroom to actually creating a professional project. 

The music I released before this album I literally had recorded in a dorm room with my friends in college. So, it was definitely a learning curve. I moved out here a year ago and all of a sudden, I was being put in a different room every two or three days to find collaborators that I could work with for the album. And I learned so much, it's so crazy. But it's been really educational, which is cool. At the end of the day, though, the majority of the album was just recorded in my producer Spencer Stewart's home studio. I would bring a song that I'd written to him and we'd produce it and record it on the spot. It almost felt the same as before– it was a very organic process. I'm very lucky that it hasn't been that daunting in that way. I feel like the music is so intimate.

Are there certain elements of your background and identity that you've incorporated into your music? 

Well, growing up in Iceland, it's very isolated. You have this innate sense of wanderlust, you just become a dreamer. And you're always wondering, what's beyond the horizon? The part of me that's very romantic comes from growing up there. With my Chinese side, that's where my music came from. My mom's Chinese and her parents were also classical musicians, so they taught me about classical music, and they're the ones who trained me from a young age in music. They really taught me the discipline and the beauty of it all.

Is there anything you really want your listeners to feel or take away with them when they hear your new album? 

I hope that through listening to the album, people will be introduced to almost a new world of sound. And maybe explore a little bit of film music or classical music or jazz music. I also think that listeners can take away from it the ability to see the magic and the beauty of mundane things. Because a lot of the things I write about are you know, toast, or coffee, or seeing someone on the tube that you think is really attractive or whatever. Just seeing the magic in daily life!

I really love your new song “Above the Chinese Restaurant.” Tell me, what’s your go-to Chinese food order?

Easy. Dumplings. I referenced dumplings a lot in that song.

Catch Laufey on her debut tour. Find tickets here!