It’s six hours earlier than showtime and a queue of youngsters already traces the road exterior east London’s EartH arts venue. They’re sitting patiently on the pavement and ending their homework or taking part in Uno, hoping to get to the entrance of the stage for the primary of three sold-out reveals by 24-year-old singer-songwriter Laufey Jónsdóttir. Overhead, the gray February afternoon threatens to interrupt into rain.
Inside, sitting subsequent to the peeling partitions of her dressing room in a pristine gingham gown, Jónsdóttir is unfazed by the degrees of anticipation.
“Since we placed on my first headline reveals in 2021, they’ve all the time bought out,” she says. “I don’t get nervous earlier than I carry out, as a result of as quickly as I’m on stage it’s this speedy launch to sing and join with the viewers. It’s the most effective a part of being a musician.”
It’s unsurprising that Jónsdóttir – recognized merely as Laufey, pronounced Lay-vay – has solely performed sold-out reveals, for the reason that statistics which have accompanied her within the 4 years since she launched her 2020 debut single, Road By Road, are dazzling. She has greater than 4 million followers on TikTok, the place her songs have gone viral a number of instances, greater than 2 million on Instagram, and in 2023 beat Björk and Sigur Rós to turn into probably the most streamed artist from Iceland. That very same 12 months, she performed sold-out reveals to greater than 60,000 folks the world over and launched collaborations with Norah Jones and Beabadoobee. Well-known followers embrace Billie Eilish, who cheered her on in February when she turned the youngest individual to win the Grammy for Greatest Conventional Pop Vocal Album – an award beforehand gained by the likes of Tony Bennett, Joni Mitchell and Michael Bublé. She is now embarking on a world tour that may see her play the Royal Albert Corridor, cross Europe, head to the US and even carry out with the Manila Philharmonic Orchestra within the Philippines. Every present is, in fact, bought out.
Much more astounding than her fast ascent is the kind of music that Laufey makes. Throughout her two albums, 2022’s Every little thing I Know About Love and 2023’s Bewitched, she has perfected a mixture of Nineteen Fifties-inspired traditional jazz vocals with luscious symphony orchestrations and confessional Taylor Swift-esque songwriting, spawning a brand new type of pop. Enjoying like TikTok’s reply to Norah Jones, Laufey is making crooning jazz palatable to teen audiences for the primary time in many years, her torch songs paying homage to a sepia-tinted world they’ve by no means recognized.
“The music I make has older inspirations however the lyrics are very trendy,” she says. “I don’t see myself as any individual who ought to have existed in a distinct decade. I’m very a lot a Twenty first-century lady and love residing on this time, since there’s no higher time to be a girl.”
Certainly, Laufey’s songwriting takes in each facet of recent romance, from tales of spying a crush on the tube (From the Begin) to the emotional perils of situationships (Promise), all couched within the heat of her low-register, Ella Fitzgerald-referencing vocals.
“I additionally assume there’s no higher time to be a musician, as a result of audiences have by no means been as open as they’re at present,” she provides. “We now have an abundance of how to hearken to all kinds of music, and it’s now not about style, it’s about feeling and temper. On the finish of the day, younger folks wish to hearken to younger folks, they don’t wish to hearken to older folks preach to them.”
Born in Reykjavik to an Icelandic father and Chinese language mom, Laufey and her similar twin sister, Júnía, grew up steeped in music. Her mom is a violinist for the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, whereas her maternal grandparents have been professors of violin and piano. Impressed by the jazz data in her dad’s assortment, in addition to her mom’s love of the classical repertoire, Laufey was given her first violin on the age of two, earlier than taking piano classes at 4 and cello classes at eight. “Initially, I wanted to be pushed to do music,” she says. “However I’m grateful that my mom made me practise day-after-day for an hour, as a result of after I reached 13, it all of the sudden clicked.”
Becoming a member of a youth orchestra as she entered her teenagers, music quickly turned a social endeavour as a lot as an escape from the sense of distinction Laufey in any other case skilled as one of many solely folks of color in her neighborhood.
“I positively felt like a foreigner, being one of many few Asians in Iceland, and having lived partially within the States from six to 9 years previous,” she says. “On high of that, I used to be a nerdy orchestra child. I didn’t go house to play with associates, I went house to practise. Music turned this challenge that I hoped can be my ticket to the massive world of the States or the UK.”
By 15, she had carried out as a cello soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and entered Icelandic actuality contest Ìsland Received Expertise, reaching the televised last. “I used to be very strict with self-discipline in highschool, I didn’t drink and I didn’t get together,” she says. “I used to be fastened on reaching my purpose of going to a college overseas and getting a full scholarship.”
The exhausting work paid off and in 2018, aged 19, she left house to attend Boston’s Berklee School of Music on a prestigious Presidential scholarship. There adopted two years stuffed with firsts: her first expertise of residing other than Júnía, her first time finding out jazz somewhat than classical music, and her first romances. “I gained independence for the primary time, I used to be now not a part of a twin unit and I used to be simply residing as a girl,” she says with a smile. “I used to be like, let’s develop up and dwell a little bit, and unexpectedly I had all these experiences to put in writing about.”
Filling up her songbook with new encounters in romance, rejection and longing, Laufey was prepared to check her materials with the general public when Covid-19 hit. “We had nowhere to go and nowhere to play as musicians, so the web was actually the one place to current any type of artwork,” she says. “I used lockdown to publish movies of myself on-line singing new songs and I used to be shocked that it took off. We ended up rising an actual viewers of younger folks.”
In April 2020, she independently launched Road By Road, a plaintive, folk-influenced ballad about reclaiming a metropolis from its reminiscences of an ex. However it wasn’t till Laufey made a TikTok video singing her tune Valentine the next 12 months that she totally went viral. “It’s only a jazz tune that I wrote on Valentine’s Day, type of as a joke, however as soon as I posted it, my cellphone began blowing up,” she says. “Now it’s turn into like a brand new commonplace. It’s enjoyable {that a} tune I wrote as a homage to the previous may be understood as new music.”
In the end, that is the essence of Laufey’s musical enchantment – repurposing previous sounds to create a wistful nostalgia for an period that her teen fanbase have by no means recognized. Whereas her debut album, Every little thing I Know About Love, was fashioned largely of these Berklee dorm room songs, her newest launch, Bewitched, sees Laufey in additional superior musical territory, co-producing and even composing classical music for the primary time – all of the whereas remaining an unbiased artist and not using a main label contract.
“It’s extra mature as a result of I’ve grown as an individual,” she says. “Not a single observe is performed on the songs with out me being within the room, and it’s all musicians taking part in actual devices. We’re all simply attempting to deliver classical and jazz music to new audiences.”
A spotlight on the album is the transferring jazz ballad Letter To My 13 12 months Previous Self, the place Laufey sings softly about her teenage emotions of inadequacy. “Once I was youthful, I felt so odd. I felt like a circus freak, as a result of I had this low voice and there have been so few Asian singer-songwriters to look as much as,” she says, her head bowed. “I wrote Letter To My 13 12 months Previous Self as a result of I used to be reflecting on how I had these huge desires however I didn’t assume they have been potential. I didn’t really feel cool sufficient or stunning sufficient. I’ve a variety of youthful followers now who’ve comparable desires and I wish to encourage them too.”
Again at EartH in Hackney, greater than 1,200 of these followers set free a deafening roar whereas Laufey performs every little thing from 40s jazz commonplace I Want You Like to her personal Twenty first-century commonplace Valentine at EartH. As she attracts to a detailed, she sings Letter To My 13 12 months Previous Self and addresses the group. “I really feel like I turned the artist that I used to be lacking after I was youthful and it makes me actually, actually completely satisfied,” she says, her voice quavering. “Each evening I look out into my crowd it feels just like the neighborhood I all the time wished however by no means had.” Her viewers cheers and a few wipe away tears from their cheeks, nodding to one another. It appears this present was well worth the wait.
