Icelandic-Chinese Musician Laufey (pronounced “lay-vay”) is
only 25 years old, but when you hear her sing, her soft, romantic timbre immediately transports you to another era. Acoustically, she evokes the greats of a bygone jazz era, but lyrically, her songs take on a decidedly modern and relatable gen-Z edge. It’s this singular winning combo that has earned the L.A.-based artist critical acclaim and growing mainstream success. Her enchanting second LP, 2023’s Bewitched, was the biggest jazz debut in Spotify history, placing her at number two globally on the streamer’s charts, and it won her the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. That album was such a hit that she recently released an extended version, called Bewitched: The Goddess Edition; Oscar-nominated Past Lives filmmaker Celine Song directed the video for its lead song.

There’s a clear sense that this is only just the beginning for Laufey. She’s currently on a tour, which has her stopping at various cities across Canada and will include performances at the Montreal International Jazz Festival and Lollapalooza.

“With the kind of music I make, [selling out tours] felt very unlikely—I was never thinking about it too much,” she says backstage at her second San Francisco show. “But I definitely wasn’t expecting the size of the crowds. It’s such a surreal feeling. A large portion of my audience is younger—audiences that would primarily listen to pop music otherwise—so the fact that they’re coming to my concerts is really special. It shows how versatile this new generation is when it comes to music.”

EXPRESS YOURSELF

“Jazz music is all about performance, right? At least, to me, it’s about the freedom of performance, the different inflections you do in the moment and the improvisations. Jazz music is best consumed in person, so to get onstage and present [that style] of song alongside the other songs I have in my repertoire is very special.”

STUDY TIME

“My mother is a violinist, and my grandparents—her parents—were a violinist and a pianist, [respectively]. Classical music was very much a part of my life growing up, and it was always playing in the house. And music was almost like another class in school. Every day, I’d come home and do an hour of piano and cello. No kid loves practising that much, but when I turned 13 or 14 and I’d been playing for quite a while, I realized that music was something I loved on its own. It became a social thing—I’d play in an orchestra, and I had friends in the music world—and I found a new appreciation for it. The final layer was when I started writing my own music. Then I was like, ‘This is something I really love.’”

NO LIMITATIONS

“I think [young audiences are more open to jazz] because of the internet. There’s so much access to music, so there’s much more openness to it. Young people don’t necessarily only listen to what’s on the radio. They enjoy finding songs that seem off the beaten path, and there are so many micro-communities [in which people] bond over certain genres. And with streaming, there’s access to this entire catalogue of music. Back in the day, if you wanted to listen to an old jazz record or classical music, you’d have to pay quite a high price to access it. Now you can listen to it at the click of a button.”

EXPANDING HORIZONS

“My music is a derivative of jazz. I love jazz and studied it growing up, but I would never claim that [my music is] the truest form of the genre. I would say I take a lot of inspiration from jazz and I borrow a lot of principles from it and classical music. Both of those genres are rigid, and I’ve broken so many rules—I don’t improvise the way a lot of jazz musicians do, and a lot of the chord progressions I use don’t technically make sense. But I think it’s really important that you learn the rules before you break them so that you’re a bit more informed and have a better foundation. My hope is that my music is kind of like a gate-way drug for people [that will get them] listening to jazz.”

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