Laufey on creating her personal sound

Laufey’s music will not be what you often consider as “pop,” but when pop is brief for well-liked, then she is certainly a pop star. The 26-year-old Icelander has earned a faithful following mixing trendy lyrics and music with classical and jazz. “My music is such a mixture of the sounds of my childhood,” she mentioned. “It is simply one thing that is grow to be part of me. I wished to make issues that made me pleased.

“I liked Golden Age musicals,” mentioned Laufey. “I might watch ‘Carousel’ and ‘Oklahoma’ and ‘American in Paris’ and ‘Sound of Music.’ They have been so lovely and had these dance breaks and the clothes have been floating and the colours – that feeling I obtained from that, I simply wished to create that feeling.”

The world she inhabits (in her work, anyway) is whimsical and romantic, filled with windswept cliffs, frilly clothes and bows … and cello, virtually at all times cello.

Watch Laufey carry out “I Want You Love” with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra:

She says the cello is “as vital to me as my voice. And I feel it is actually what makes a Laufey music a Laufey music.”

Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir comes by it naturally. Her Icelandic father launched her to jazz when she was a lady; her Chinese language mom performed classical violin. So does Laufey’s an identical twin sister.

Rising up, she mentioned, she felt totally different: “Everybody was like, , going to play soccer after college or dance, and I used to be sitting down and enjoying music from the seventeenth century. After which on prime that I used to be a twin, an identical twin. I simply really feel, like, bizarre on prime of bizarre, on prime of bizarre.”

And issues solely obtained weirder when she began singing, as when she appeared on the TV competitors “Iceland’s Acquired Expertise” singing Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Acquired You,” at age 13: “I keep in mind happening singing competitions in Iceland after I was youthful they usually’d at all times be like, ‘She seems like a 40-year-old girl that is been divorced twice and she or he chain-smokes cigarettes,” Laufey mentioned. “And I used to be, like, a 13-year-old woman standing on stage being like, okay, like, I simply wished to be a lady. So, yeah I used to be at all times somewhat bit like … felt somewhat bit like a circus act.”

However Laufey discovered her footing on the Berklee Faculty of Music in Boston. She began posting authentic songs and jazz covers on social media throughout the pandemic, they usually rapidly went viral.

Laufey performs “I Love You (For Sentimental Causes”) on guitar and cello:

I requested, “Have been you shocked that folks have been responding to the jazz influences?”

“I used to be so shocked, as a result of I might by no means seen any instance of it earlier than,” Laufey replied. “And I might by no means seen a group of younger folks … that was essentially the most surprising half, that it was younger folks responding to the music. However there was at all times part of me that was like, in fact, it is the very best music on this planet!”

Now she sells out nearly each live performance – like a latest one in Norfolk, Virginia, the place one fan, Alissa, instructed us, “After I first like confirmed, like, my mother and father that, they have been like, ‘That is what you guys hearken to?’ And I used to be like, ‘Yeah, like, that is what, like, youthful persons are listening to!'”

One other fan, Logan, mentioned, “I really feel like she takes simply form of extra ‘previous folks music’ and pushes it into, like, a more recent era in order that extra folks can take pleasure in it.”

Laufey’s new album, “A Matter of Time,” comes out this week. A stadium tour will observe.

Her songwriting often begins on guitar, like her bossa nova-influenced “From the Begin.”

However she simply as simply can weave in somewhat classical, as she did on her final album, “Bewitched.” Final 12 months, “Bewitched” briefly knocked Frank Sinatra off the highest of the jazz charts – after which, that album received a finest conventional pop vocal Grammy Award, beating such artists as Bruce Springsteen.

After which, Barbra Streisand requested Laufey to sing on her latest album of duets, performing a music Laufey wrote, “Letter to My 13-12 months-Previous Self.” “It is a type of songs that I wrote simply in my most intimate moments and will have been a music that I by no means put out,” she mentioned. “It was a music for me to heal myself. Nevertheless it’s a really hopeful music. It is reaching again to inform your youthful self that you will be okay.”

Do not you are concerned ’bout your curly hair
Garments that do not fairly suit you wherever
Voices echo within the fitness center
One other woman’s had her first kiss
Please do not assume an excessive amount of of it, darling

I requested, “What do you assume your 13-year-old self would consider all of this?”

“I feel she’d be actually excited,” Laufey replied. “I feel she’d be actually pleased. There’s not a single a part of myself that has modified any of my inventive pursuits to observe some type of development. And I get to make precisely the music that I liked again then. So, I feel I might’ve been actually, actually pleased.”

To listen to Laufey performing “Silver Lining,” from her album “A Matter of Time,” click on on the video participant beneath:

WEB EXCLUSIVE: Prolonged Interview – Laufey (Video)

      
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Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Steven Tyler.