FEATURE: Spotlight: Laufey — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Laufey

_________

A must-hear artist…

PHOTO CREDIT: Burak Cingi for The Line of Best Fit

who is busy with tour commitments for the rest of the year, I would advise everyone to check out Laufey. She is amazing. Her debut album, Everything I Know About Love, was released last year to critical acclaim. Her new E.P., California and Me, came out last month. I want to bring together a few interviews – starting from 2021 and working to a very recent one – so that we can get a better impression of Laufey. I am going to start with an interview from 2021. The Line of Best Fit highlighted an artist who was on the rise and being talked about as a sensational artist to watch closely:

“Since releasing her debut single “Street By Street” - as the world went into lockdown in the spring of 2020 - rising musician Laufey Lin has amassed a vast following on social media and already collaborated with some bucket-list musical heroes through official releases and videos online.

“I need seasons,” she laughs as she tells me about her recent move to LA. We catch up over coffee in London while she’s in town to perform a mesmerising set at the Southbank Centre as part of London’s Jazz Festival, which she’s anticipating to be a career high. “It definitely feels like a big moment, I got to go to my first fitting for a show, with Paul Smith, which was a really surreal movie moment. I felt like the whole time there was montage music playing and I felt like I was having a makeover in a film.”

Between rehearsals, fittings and promo, 21-year old Laufey’s been hanging out with her twin sister, who’s been studying in Scotland, and her mother who joined them from Washington D.C. “I feel so comfortable here and when I’m walking around London,” she tells me.

Laufey’s journey to the Jazz Festival stage and beyond begins at home in Iceland with a gift: “One of my earliest memories is receiving a violin for the first time, from my grandfather, who was a violin professor,” she recalls, “it was basically like a toy instrument but I remember my mom teaching me the simplest things, and practising with my sister.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Burak Cingi

Music is in her blood – Laufey's mother is a classical musician who performed with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra. “Iceland is really cool because the music scene is so small, everything kind of mixes together,” she explains. “The classical musicians are playing and the pop gigs and pop musicians are doing things with classical musicians, so I grew up going to classical symphony concerts, but then I'd also go to rock gigs where my mom was playing violin.”

Seeing this free-form musicality inspired Laufey to not put limits on her own exploration of sound, when she first came to realise “it’s a very cool thing to mix genres,” and that’s her vision for the future too. “That's how music is going to move forward, especially classical and jazz,” she adds, how “these styles that are kind of at risk of being extinct” need to develop and evolve.

Picking up the piano at four years old, before falling in love with the cello at eight she was on the classical, pre-professional track to a conservatory education before she decided to take a step back and really think about which path to take. Raised on Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole, thanks to her father’s love of jazz, Laufey remembers listening to it growing up and loving how these artists combined elements of jazz with classical and pop too.

“I think growing up in Iceland, it was secluded and you kind of grow up as a dreamer with this idea for wanderlust… Dreaming of life in a different country or whatnot and I think that all went along with this magical music, so I started singing and teaching myself jazz piano and I found myself instead of going to classical conservatory, I ended up going to Berkeley, which is primarily a jazz school.”

This was by no means an easy decision to make, Laufey describes the process like an ultimatum, “it really felt like I was choosing whether I was going to be a classical musician for the rest of my life, or if I was going to try my hand at pop music.”

Offering the best of both worlds Berkeley gave her the opportunity to not only study from all factions of music which she adored, so naturally she started making her own, ‘I found that I could bring all these worlds together on my own with my own songwriting,” she says and in her second year she shared her first single with the world.

“Something had clicked for the first time and I’d found my producer, he just lived across from my dorm, he was in a barbershop quartet so I knew he liked harmonies and understood what I wanted to do,” she explains. There was only one thing which almost stood in her way, the pandemic. Racing to get “Street By Street” recorded before there was a mass exodus off campus Laufey left it until the very final moment. “I was like if I don’t record this now, I never will, so on literally the last day on campus while my mom and sister were packing up my dorm room, I was in Davin’s room [producer Davin Kingston] recording this song and thank god we did it because it started this magical journey.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Burak Cingi

With school moving online, Laufey was able to power through classes at an extremely efficient pace so after some extra summer classes, she graduated early and to spend more time focusing on her snowballing music career. Her debut EP Typical Of Me followed a year later, in spring 2021, with seven delicately crafted songs. While Laufey’s sound includes elements of classical, jazz, pop and R&B, there are moments where it’s so compellingly vintage that on tracks like the sumptuous “Someone New” it’s only when her lyrics mention Instagram that you’re reminded this isn’t a decades-old classic.

Even her nonchalant admittance about a bad hair day (“it's not your fault it looks like shit”) on the refreshingly honest “Best Friend” barely breaks the cinematic allure especially when she begins scatting over the wistful production. This song made for a very special moment during her London Jazz Festival set as she brought out her twin sister Junia for a violin solo. “I swear I’m living in a movie at this point,” she mused in a TikTok caption for the performance.

At the end of this exciting year at the top of Laufey’s list of highlights is releasing a track with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. “Being in classical music growing up, I've always sought that validation and then to have them reach out to me after the music I've been releasing has not been directly classical music,” she pauses to compose herself, “just being able to collaborate with an orchestra that I've like watched and followed growing up was just really really crazy”.

There is no doubt that Everything I Know About Love was one of the mist impressive debut albums of 2022. It was a remarkable release that introduced me to Laufey. There was a lot of interest around her. I want to come to METAL’s interview with this amazing artist. Someone who is definitely primed for worldwide domination:

“Your music itself is already quite intimate, and with social media, we get to see the behind-the-scenes process of your songs. How do you think social media adds to that intimacy between you and your fans?

I think that social media is such a blessing in the way that I get to connect to my fans directly. I love answering messages and comments and giving advice and receiving advice from them. I share a lot of my life on social media in hopes that it brings visual context to my music and writing!

Now, let’s dive into your music. You draw inspiration from jazz, pop and classical music, which are all very different genres. How do you navigate these three very distinct sounds in your own work? Do you ever feel pressure to conform to one genre of music?

I’m not even sure how to navigate them! (laughs). I think they’re all woven so deeply into my musical subconscious that it just comes out somehow. Some days I’ll lean more towards one genre and other days I’ll be more inspired by another – it really depends on what I’m feeling. I don’t feel too much pressure to comfort to any certain style. My fans are so kind and open to whatever I do. It always ends up sounding like a Laufey song because it’s my voice and writing!

On the flip side, do you feel a sense of responsibility to bridge the gap between these genres?

I do feel a sense of responsibility, but I also enjoy it so much. I think that these older styles of music are so beautiful, and I don’t see many young people advocating for them and I have an audience of young people that are willing to listen!

PHOTO CREDIT: Gemma Warren

Recently, you released your debut album, Everything I Know About Love. While each song explores a different sound, from mellow cello features to groovy bossa nova, something that they have in common is they all sound quite mesmerising and dreamy. How do you go about creating these sounds?

I think what gives these songs a dreamy quality is the instrumentation and arrangements that are borrowed from jazz and classical music that aren’t as common in contemporary music. We layered a lot of strings and fun instruments such as harp, bassoon and celesta, and experimented with different textures to create a timeless, cinematic experience

One reason why your music is so attractive is because of how relatable it is. For example, Beautiful Stranger is about developing a crush on a stranger on the train, which I’m sure we’ve all experienced. Where do you draw inspiration from?

I draw all of my inspiration from my own life and experiences! I love to journal about my thoughts, so a lot of my songs are born out of journal entries.

Something I love about your lyricism is that it really situates the listener as the protagonist of a story, bringing us through the ups and downs of romance. What does your writing process look like?

Thank you! That’s truly what I’m trying to do. Before I even write the first lyric, I always know what the song is going to be about – what the message or the title of the song is going to be. That way, I always have a sense of direction.

Your songs are a very honest show of emotion. For example, Fragile really delves into how it feels to miss someone and Falling Behind, while more upbeat, talks about the inevitable feeling of falling behind when everyone around you is getting into relationships. Is it difficult to put yourself out there like that? Or is it liberating?

I’ve always been a very open book and expressive about my thoughts and feelings. I think it’s quite liberating to put my thoughts out there and if anything, it’s quite validating when somebody hears one of my songs and says that they’ve felt the same way before”.

Let’s move things on a little bit. I was interested by an interview from NOTION published in April 2022. They compared Laufey to Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. The Gen-Z equivalent, such is the power of her voice. It is like a rich and classical instrument. There are a few portion of the interview that caught my eye:

“You released your EP, ‘Typical of Me’ last year. What was the inspiration behind this title?

It’s a phrase I say a lot. ‘Oh, that’s so typical of me,’ you know? Growing up, if I did something that was so typical of me, my mother would say, ‘oh that’s so typical of you, that’s so typical of Laufey.’ It was my first EP, and I was thinking about what all these songs represent. It’s all very honest song-writing, and the way I write is very much the way I talk. I don’t take things too seriously. There is a little bit of humour in everything.

Which song on the EP was the hardest to finish?

It took a while to nail “Magnolia”. Sonically, I wanted it to sound different from the other songs. The other songs were almost like a bedroom sound, but very jazzy. With “Magnolia”, even though it has many jazzy progressions, I wanted it to have a lighter touch. I toyed around with that one for a while, trying to perfect it.

You were raised between two different worlds, Reykjavik and Washington, DC. How would you say your cultural heritage has shaped who you are and the kind of music you create?

I grew up in a world where I would listen to my mother play violin in a classical Iceland symphony concert one day, and then the next day she would be playing a pop concert in a Church. The day after she would be playing in a death-metal group. There is so much mixing of genres. The pop musicians help on classical projects, the classical musicians work on the rock projects. There is so much mixing and matching and genre-bending, which is one of the reasons why I feel like I mix styles so much. I want to take down the walls of genre, because I didn’t grow up in a world where the walls of genre were that high. That’s culturally impacted me – the mixing of styles and mixing of cultures. I’m half-Chinese, half-Icelandic. Grew up partially in the US. Everything is just mixed up. My music is too.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Williams

Do you find that different cities and cultures bring out different creative sides of you?

Definitely. I stay true to myself, but with every place I travel to, I experience different things, therefore I write about different things. There are people in every city to write about and experience things with.

At what point in your life did you realise that music could be a means of expressing yourself out in the world?

My mother is a classical violinist, so I don’t remember a time without music. I was given a violin when I was two, I started taking piano lessons when I was four, then cello lessons when I was eight. Music was always something I heard around the house. There was always someone practising, or I was backstage at the orchestra at the Iceland Symphony. It was something that was very much in my nature, but in the beginning it was school. It was another class that I took. I finished school, came back home, and practised for an hour or two. It was around the time that I was thirteen or fourteen that I started singing and found that it was a way of expressing myself. It felt really natural to me. I didn’t have to practise it as much as the other instruments.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Williams

What did you learn from your mother as a musician?

Everything. She taught me all of the basics, both on piano and on cello. I have a Chinese mother. She’s a strict musician mom. She instilled in me so much discipline and appreciation for the art. I think that’s what it is – appreciation for music. No matter how hard we practised or drilled, at the end of the night you’d put your instruments away and you’d just enjoy the music. That’s the biggest lesson that my mother taught me.

What do you think you taught her?

I’ve taught her a lot of niche TikTok humour. I’ve taught her a lot of jazz. I’ve taught her to let go of classical rules. That music can be created. The player can also create. That’s the idea.

Are there any classical traditions that you dislike or that you choose to reinvent in your own music?

It’s less so about tradition, but one thing I’m passionate about is changing the snobby air around classical music. There is a certain academic approach to these forms of music which I grew up around and honestly studied within the walls of, which I think are to the detriment of the art”.

I am going to bring things right up to date. NME spotlighted the incredible and incomparable Laufey. This is a name that needs to be on everyone’s radar. Music that, once heard, buckles the knees. Such a stunning and beautiful artist whose music will endure for years to come:

“Last year, she performed with a 55-piece orchestra at Reykjavík’s prestigious Harpa concert hall, the heart of the city’s cultural scene that’s home to the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and has previously hosted fellow Icelandic natives like Björk and Of Monsters and Men.

Laufey sold out two nights there, performing to crowds that ranged from traditional jazz aficionados to old schoolmates and devoted ‘Lauvers’, as she recently branded her fanbase. She’s since immortalised the career-highlight performances on her recent live album ‘A Night At The Symphony’.

In the online world, meanwhile, she’s built impressive social followings of 2.5 million and 1.1million on TikTok and Instagram, respectively, where she’s caught the eye of the likes of BTS’s V and Billie Eilish, the latter having reposted Laufey’s jazzy spin on her ‘Happier Than Ever’ song ‘My Future’.

Still, it’s her own music that’s generated the biggest buzz, with recent runaway hit ‘From The Start’ blowing up on TikTok and entering Spotify’s Top 50 chart in the US, racking up over 80 million streams on the platform since its May release.

PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Pentel

But it’s not difficult to see why Laufey has attracted so much good fortune on her swift ascent these past few years. One would only have to watch the music video for the title track of her new album to understand her deep commitment to modern-day storytelling that has left so many spellbound. ‘Bewitched’ – which opens with a twinkling classical arrangement courtesy of the London-based Philharmonia Orchestra, and sounds like it’s been plucked right out of the Golden Age of Hollywood – depicts a love story set in London, in which she swoons: “You bewitched me from the first time that you kissed me.”

Like so many of her songs, it bottles up the dizzying feeling of being head over heels for someone. Whether she’s romanticising a fleeting interaction with a stranger on the tube or wistfully reflecting on a past love, Laufey seamlessly blends jazz instrumentals with the kind of diaristic pop lyrics that you might expect to hear from artists like Gracie Abrams or Lizzy McAlpine. These vignettes of her real life are unsurprisingly resonating with listeners at a time where popular social media self-love mantras encourage young people to “be the main character” and “romanticise your life”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Eva Pentel

“I think love makes everyone really silly,” Laufey says. “I remember the first time I went on a date, we had a glass of wine and we kissed and then I left in the rain, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, it’s really like the movies!’”

The simplicity of the timeless sentiment paired with the nostalgic romanticism of her musical roots has attracted a hugely intergenerational pool of listeners. Her younger fans are swept up by the Disney-esque magic of the songs – music to waltz around the living room on a lazy Sunday morning or plod about a drizzly Notting Hill pretending you’re in a Nora Ephron film. At the same time, older fans are intrigued by a fresh new voice that resembles the music of times gone by.

Much of the charm, though, can be pinpointed to Laufey’s exquisite technical brilliance. Inspired by jazz music legends like Chet Baker and Billie Holiday, Laufey can serenade an audience with deep, pitch perfect vocals while effortlessly rotating between cello, piano and guitar, countless hours of practice stored in her nimble hands.

It’s a unique position to be in for a rising artist – one who looks right at home amongst a grand orchestra, and can also post TikToks with Gen Z-coded captions like: “I made the song ur [sic] going to play at your imaginary wedding to the person you don’t even dare talk to”. For Laufey, that simply underlines the universality of the classical and vocal jazz that she has loved “blindly” for her whole life. “I think it’s this really beautiful middle ground that can bring generations together,” she says.

Laufey, a self-described “huge Swiftie”, also looked to the global pop sensation’s example to help refine her own lyrical fluency. “I think she’s one of my biggest songwriting inspirations, and the way that she’s managed to reinvent herself, and stay relevant, and still so poised and speak her mind, is really just remarkable,” Laufey says.

It’s also helpful that she has plenty of musical peers to inspire her, too, having bonded with NME’s inaugural The Cover star D4vd over their similar music tastes. “I had heard his music all over TikTok, and I was like, ‘This kid is so talented’,” she recalls. She reached out online only to find that he had already messaged her a few months prior, which led to their cinematic duet on ‘This Is How It Feels’ from D4vd’s recent EP ‘Petals To Thorns’”.

If you have not checked out the amazing music of Laufey, then make sure that you do. Such a phenomenal artist who is quite rightly being tipped as a future star – although she is one already -, I do hope that she gets to do tour dates in the U.K. It may still be quite early on her career; you can tell nobody in music quite sounds like her. A sound that is vintage, modern, distinct yet easily accessible, Laufey has crafted and created…