When I get on Zoom with Laufey, the 24-year-old Icelandic Chinese artist who puts other multi-hyphenates to shame as a singer, composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, she accidentally shows me around her home. It’s a sweltering day in Los Angeles, where she’s based, and is trying to find the coolest place in her white-walled, Spanish-esque style home as she navigates her computer from room to room, wearing a white eyelet top that she describes as basically a “napkin.” She finally finds the best temperature in a room that’s filled with books and music—writers and artists that she’s a fan of.
She shows me the “sick Harry [Styles] vinyl” of Harry’s House she just got that’s in a stunning cobalt blue. Unearthed social media posts acknowledge that she long ago identified as a Gleek—”Give Your Heart a Break” and “Roots Before Branches” remain her favorite Glee covers. It’s apparent through her approach to her music and how she’s absorbed inspiration that Laufey (pronounced “lay-vay”) is a consummate fan—eager to go across genre and aesthetic to create something that at first glance could label her an “old soul,” with her appreciation of a sound that is heavily classical and jazz influenced. But she’s smartly figured out how to meld the classic and the modern in all aspects from her sound and confessional lyrics to building a devoted fanbase on TikTok.
Classical music was always a backbone of Laufey’s family growing up—her mother is a violinist and her maternal grandparents were also musicians. Jazz was also in the mix because her father loved the genre. “The second I could walk I was given a violin, and then I started playing piano when I was four, taking lessons and started playing cello. I took classical music very seriously as a kid,” she says. Her parents were always very supportive of her pursuing a music career while they went back and forth between Washington D.C. and London. Something she brings up often is, when she was younger, she felt like a late bloomer or that she was a bit overly cautious when it came to living life. In fact, when she wanted to take a real crack at music, Laufey was the one who needed the push because she was scared she wouldn’t make it. Luckily for her, her family was there to give her that push. “They always believed that I would become a singer and they believed it a lot more than I did. I was always very safe. And my mother, who’s a classical violinist, she was like, ‘You have to chase your dream. You’re meant to do this.’”
Another one of her biggest supporters is her beloved twin sister, Junia, who currently lives in London where Laufey spends a lot of time. The pair played music all the time together growing up and share a bond that she can’t quite put into words. But it also goes beyond the traditional sisterly bond; Junia now serves as Laufey’s creative director and is responsible for all the visuals, photos, artwork, and merchandise. “We’re really close already but to have direct communication, honesty, especially the further I move into my career, it's like having somebody who will always tell me the cold, hard truth is really valuable. And I trust her instincts so much. She knows me so well and is a lot more organized than me, a bit more stylish than me. So I think it kind of all works out perfectly and I'm so lucky to have her.”
Her upbringing in Iceland is something that’s deeply inspired Laufey’s music and aesthetic—she got very into classic films alongside her love of jazz and classical as a child. But she also used her love of music as an escape of sorts. “Growing up in Iceland, having that kind of dream world of music to escape to was really kind of crucial in my development and it's the reason I like making music like this,” she says.
Growing up biracial in Iceland wasn’t easy for Laufey due to the nature of the country itself. “I felt different, but I was like, ‘Oh, I’m Icelandic.’ But I felt different and foreign. I knew I was half Chinese, but Iceland is so homogenous that I wasn't able to identify with the Asian part of myself. Even though I speak Chinese and was raised by Chinese women, I would say I'm quite white-passing when it comes to being Asian. So I kind of just became that. Then every summer in China growing up, I didn't look Chinese and so that was odd.” She was happy to have her sister who obviously had a similar experience, but never felt that she was able to really dive into understanding her Asian heritage until she moved to the United States as an adult. “It’s really not only until I moved to the States about four or five years ago that I really got to experience my Asian side here. I’ve found a community of people here and other Asian artists that I can connect with. I’m so proud of being Asian and getting to connect with that side of myself is so special, she says. “I have a lot of Asian fans, and it’s clear that there was something missing in pop culture and in pop music for Asian kids, someone to look up to. I always say I became the musician that I wanted and needed.”
Feeling othered as a kid is already particularly hard, especially when it can take little to nothing to get bullied. Aside from being otherworldly talented when it came to Laufey’s musical prowess, she also had that voice. If you’ve listened to her music, her honey vocals truly feel like an old school throwback. You can imagine seeing her perform with her long light brown hair styled in a ’40s style curl at a smokey speakeasy. So putting that out there as a teen had to be a bit nerve wracking when she was on Ísland Got Talent in 2014 and The Voice Iceland in 2015. She jokes that she always forgets that she was on those shows, but even in a very small country it put her on display. “When I did those, I was just a singer. I was this 14-year-old with a very old jazzy voice and all the headlines were like ‘14-year-old girl with dark, soulful, jazzy voice from another age.’ I didn’t like it that much because it made me feel like a party trick, like a circus clown. I already felt so larger than life and foreign and I looked different.” As she saw her peers from the show get modeling contracts or start working with producers and she wasn’t chosen, it motivated her to work on her music and attend university abroad.
So she took that voice and partnered it with her classical background and contemporary lyrics. She attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music and graduated in 2021. She mentions that she grew personally once she moved to the States but also her curriculum at Berklee allowed her to do so in her music. “I studied all classical music before I went to Berklee and then I got to Berklee. It was jazz and pop and I had to unlearn a lot of things. I was definitely confused, but it was so necessary. I was so scared of mixing genres before, and then I got to Berklee and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it literally doesn’t matter’. Also, it was my first time living on my own, away from my twin sister, and away from my family. I got these experiences as a young woman for the first time that I could write about.”
That unlearning helped her figure out her sound and she began self-releasing music during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic which kicked off her career and her 2022 debut album Everything I Know About Love.
She’s continued to perfect the Laufey sound on her new album Bewitched—which she sees as a continuation of Everything I Know About Love. She knew she would want to release a second album fairly quickly after the first and she knew that Bewitched would be the title. “I think visually I knew it was going to veer on the darker side and I knew I wanted it to be a love album. So the first album was very light, innocent, hyper-romantic. And then the second era, if you will, is more mature. It’s sexier. I’ve definitely grown a lot as a songwriter. I’ve also matured a lot as a woman. So the experiences and the lyrics reflect that. I’m composing for the first time in it. And, I’m leaning more into my jazz and classical roots—leaning more into the things that make me Me, I would say.” The album is filled with gorgeously rendered songs and heartfelt, aching lyrics but a standout of the album is “Letter to My 13 Year Old Self,” where Laufey tells the teen version of herself what she would become. “I was reflecting on the past year and wishing I could tell my younger self that I'd be doing all these cool things. I just wanted to give my younger self a hug and tell her it was all going to be okay. It just came out. I just wanted to paint the story and also get the end in one of the lyrics. I say, ‘One day you’ll be up on stage and little girls will scream your name.’”
And that’s one of the other things that’s brilliant about Laufey, aside from seamlessly blending classic genres for a young, modern audience, is the way that she’s harnessed social media to both promote her music but also understanding the importance of how to treat your fanbase. On TikTok, where she has 2.8 million followers, she’ll upload videos of sneak peeks of her upcoming songs, poking fun at her own clothing or her own sad girl energy. The same goes for her Instagram, where 1.4 million people follow her.
But she also uses these platforms as a way to interact with her fans through these posts or even her book club where she shares some of her favorite books like the “shrines” of Eve Babitz and Joan Didion on the bookshelves in her home. She waxes about writers who inspire her like the aforementioned and Dolly Alderton. But the thing that might be what makes Laufey work, is that she’ll always be a fan. She gets excited when talking about musicals, or books, or the vinyl copy of Harry’s House. She passionately gestures about the decidedly difficult task of picking a favorite Taylor Swift song, having recently gone to The Eras Tour, which she posted about on her TikTok, and describes herself as a “big Swiftie.” But she understands her fanbase, because she is them, was them. “I think honestly, the reason I am such a fan, and I think the reason I approach my fans with the way that I do and connect with them the way that I do, is I am a fan of musicians myself. I remember being a young musician and looking up to older musicians and sending them messages and the few times that they would comment on a cover or respond to me, it would just make my year. And the fact that I have that power now, it’s insane that I can make someone's year in a second just by responding to them. I don't take that lightly at all, and maybe one day I won't be able to do that as much, but right now while I can, I really emphasize doing it makes a difference.”
