This gamine persona belies a business savvy aided by her partnership with her creative director: twin sister (and accomplished violinist) Junia Lin Jónsdóttir. Fans have been showing up to concerts and secret sessions (like a recent London gig inside a boat’s floating bookstore) in “Laufey-core”-a preppy, retro look, complete with pleated miniskirts, penny loafers, and neat collars. Everyone wants to be represented.”Īnd represent they do. “If you go to my shows, a large portion of the audience is Asian and I don't think that's by accident. With contributing cultural factors like the K-Pop boom and the rise of contemporaries such as breakout Filipino-British singer and friend Beabadobee, it appears the possibilities are broadening for future generations. “I’ve become the artist I wanted to look up to,” Laufey says. “I didn't know I was allowed to do this or if people would accept me in this space,” says Gee. Neither Gee nor Laufey were exposed to popular Asian musicians when they were coming up. “Whether she’s plucking a cello or tinkling the ivories, she has a multidimensional and very visual appeal that extends beyond the tradition.” “The fact that she can stand in front of a mic with a Gibson ES-335 guitar wearing a gown is baller,” he says. “How many mainstream artists play the cello?” asks Derrick Gee, a Chinese-Australian radio host and music commentator who became aware of her when he ran 88Rising Radio, a platform for Asian artists on SiriusXM. There is something rather significant about what Laufey represents, both sonically and visually. Today, she’s drawn comparisons to everyone from torch songstress Julie London and The Queen of Jazz Ella Fitzgerald, to admirer Billie Eilish-who shared Laufey's acoustic cover version of Eilish's “ Happier Than Ever.” “The things that I was worried about are the reason I have my career today.” They also earned her the prestigious Presidential Scholarship to Berklee College Music, where she grew into her distinctive rich alto register (typically the second lowest for a female vocalist) and deep vibrato. And say everything’s going to be okay,” Laufey says. I've always had this deep voice and it just made me feel really old and different.” These hangups weren’t helped when one of the talent shows deemed her “the 14 year old girl with a voice of a 50 year old divorced woman.” “With that song, I wish I could go back to that version of myself and give her a hug. “I wanted to be a singer, but I didn't feel beautiful enough. I just remember feeling so incredibly out of place and different,” she says. “Pretty little blonde girls around me were having their first kisses and whispering together in gym class. “Letter To My Thirteen Year Old Self,” off her latest album, is a particularly poignant musical throwback to the Laufey she once was. “I'm still riding off of that foundation, stamina, and technique to this very day.” “I'm so thankful my mom pushed me to practice and instilled that kind of discipline,” she says. By age four she was playing piano, soon swapping the free-spirited Icelandic summers of endless daylight for cello band camp in Beijing. But today, she’s found her groove as Gen-Z’s resident emo-jazz romanticist.īorn in Reykjavik to Chinese mother who played violin in the local symphony and Icelandic economist father with a taste for Chet Baker, Laufey Lin Jónsdóttir and her identical twin sister were raised on an rich musical diet of big band standards, orchestral numbers, and classical string sonatas. “Everybody’s falling in love and I’m falling behind” she sings on her debut album, Everything I Know About Love. Over oat milk lattes in Los Angeles, Laufey (pronounced “lay-vay”) opened up on everything from her unconventional upbringing, to her fashion aspirations and relationship wins and woes, rife with all the plotlines that make for her signature lovelorn hooks. This week, she releases her sophomore album Bewitched. And the spell she casts is one spun from jazz-inspired, heartrending songs, that rack up millions of views with every coy TikTok missive. The ascending star of Icelandic music, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Laufey is straight out of a twinkling Nordic fairytale.
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