One mark of whether someone has the boldness to\u00a0be\u00a0a good pop star is how they\u00a0respond to overhearing someone slagging them off. A few weeks ago, the Icelandic-Chinese jazz-pop phenomenon Laufey was at a coffee shop close to her Los Angeles home when her ears pricked up at the mention of her name (it\u2019s pronounced \u201cLay-vay\u201d, by the way). \u201cI used to love her,\u201d a young woman told her friends. \u201cI\u2019ve met her and she\u2019s so sweet, but her music is unlistenable now.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that split-second, Laufey realised that she could do the Normal Person Thing (slink away unnoticed and furiously text her group chat), or do the Pop Star Thing. She spun around to face the group. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d Laufey said, her voice dripping with honeyed sarcasm. \u201cI try my best.\u201d<\/p>\n
The thought of being confronted by a celebrity you are gossiping about is enough to send most of us into an early grave, and I nervously laugh as Laufey tells me the story one morning in New York. She laughs too, perhaps a little shocked by her ballsiness. \u201cI wasn\u2019t even trying to clap back,\u201d she says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t know what to say, they were so dumbfounded.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This goes against much of what I thought I knew about Laufey. The 26-year-old has drawn an obsessive fanbase for winsome love songs that marry her jazz and classical training with sticky pop hooks. Her music is a giddy tumble into a retro-modern world of soft teen romance, with aurora skies, sunset kisses and crushes who leave you on \u201cread\u201d. It surges with the big feelings of modern young womanhood, swaddling them in tulle and sending them airborne amid cascading orchestration.<\/p>\n
Over the peppy bossa nova of her breakout, TikTok-buoyed hit From the Start,<\/a> she comes across as an Austen heroine who speaks internet, tortured by the \u201cburning pain\u201d of listening to a crush \u201cblah blah blah\u201d-ing interminably about a new partner. Her fans, often young women, are drawn into Laufey-land by her big-sister energy: an edition of her 2023 album Bewitched came with a themed board game. At first glance, with her retro jazz-influenced sound, you might not peg Laufey as the most likely superstar, one who has racked up nearly 5bn Spotify streams and a string of sellout shows across the world. But you could also see her music as a lighter and more literal take on the vintage-hued introspection that has made Lana Del Rey and Billie Eilish stadium-fillers around the globe.<\/p>\n I had a more shocking kind of success than I thought I would ever have. It got a bit hard for me to keep up mentally<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now Laufey is keen to rough up her reputation as gen-Z\u2019s favourite jazz savant, at least a little. Her\u00a0new album A Matter of Time splits the difference between sugar-plum symphonics with imperfect notes and vocals that crack with emotion. One song has jolting strings that she compares to a scream. \u201cI wanted to make more of a statement on this album,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve become known as a bit of\u00a0a soft singer. I am that, but I also want to show parts of myself that aren\u2019t that pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n She arrived in the hotel lobby this morning on time and as neat as a pin, with a cardigan-wearing bunny rabbit dangling from her handbag. (The critter, named Mei Mei, is Laufey\u2019s mascot and alias of sorts \u2013 she releases alternative versions<\/a> of her songs under its name, and it is also available to buy<\/a>, with a portion of the proceeds aiding music education as part of the Laufey Foundation.) \u201cDo you want to go in there?\u201d she asks, leading me into a side room and getting out the best biscuits: \u201cIt\u2019s the guests-only lounge.\u201d The place is done up like a hunting lodge, with\u00a0artfully oxidised mirrors, a wall-mounted antelope head and, most bizarrely, given that it is summer, a\u00a0burning log fire. When I comment on the strangeness, Laufey says, wryly: \u201cWell, it\u2019s now reached a very cool 24 degrees.\u201d<\/p>\n All that jazz \u2026 Laufey on stage earlier this year. Photograph: Tommaso Boddi\/Getty Images\/Gold House<\/p>\n After beating Bruce Springsteen to take home the 2024 Grammy award for best traditional pop vocal album, Laufey\u2019s career has gone into overdrive. She\u2019s now a fashion week fixture, trading air kisses with Naomi Campbell on the front row of the Chanel show in July, and has celebrity pals in Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan, PinkPantheress and the indie sensation Clairo, whom she recently challenged to a spicy chicken wing-eating contest on a Hot Ones episode<\/a>. She has won over industry legends: earlier this year, she duetted with Barbra Streisand on a heartfelt cover<\/a> of her song Letter to My 13 Year Old Self. \u201cIt\u2019s beautiful to see a young artist inspired by jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday make such a deep connection with her fans,\u201d said Streisand. This autumn, Laufey will embark on her first arena tour<\/a>, with two nights at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n She says she was driven by a \u201chunger\u201d to imbue the\u00a0new experiences of a whirlwind few years into her\u00a0new album. It radiates a sense of adventure, dovetailing between twangy campfire country to swoony ballads and sherbert-spiked pop. The record is produced by Laufey and longtime collaborator Spencer Stewart: between them, they can play just about any instrument you have heard of, as well as some you may not have. I\u00a0was unfamiliar with the celesta, an obscure kind of idiophone that Stewart and Laufey play on the record (it sounds like a child\u2019s musical jewellery box). On the Busby Berkeley-worthy confection Lover Girl<\/a>, she knowingly leans into her\u00a0Cupid-struck image, while on Carousel, Laufey reckons with inviting a partner into her circus-like life while a seasick accordion plays. The rapturous Forget-Me-Not, recorded with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (for which she was a teenage cello soloist), is her most accomplished work of composition to date; her voice soars among flurries of flutes.<\/p>\n Key phase \u2026 Laufey. Photograph: Erlendur Sveinsson<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted the album to reflect all sides of my emotional scale,\u201d she says, huddling in air-con that has apparently been set to \u201cHimalayan\u201d. \u201cWithin one day, I will have a happy hour and a crying hour. I\u00a0have no\u00a0interest in making an album that\u2019s one vibe throughout.\u201d But there is, she says, an emotional through-line about learning to accept yourself while falling in love with someone else. She won\u2019t talk about her relationship status today though, and I ask if internet scrutiny makes it hard to write candidly about her dating experiences. \u201cThere\u2019s always a line\u00a0of ambiguity,\u201d Laufey says, before smiling mischievously. \u201cBut if you get into a situation with me, you kind of know that I might write about it.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a playful looseness to Laufey that suggests she has settled into her success. She says that\u00a0hasn\u2019t always been easy. After her Grammy win, she struggled to balance the new attention with a punishing touring schedule. \u201cI was a little bit scared,\u201d she says. \u201cI had a more shocking kind of success than I thought I would ever have. With the flurry of it all, it got a bit hard for me to keep up mentally.\u201d It wasn\u2019t just the shows; it was that being a pop star means being a pi\u00f1ata for online opinion. \u201cIt was the battle of seeing a bad photo of yourself online, or hearing bad comments about yourself,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was tough.\u201d<\/p>\n Sing when you\u2019re winning \u2026 Laufey with her Grammy in 2024. Photograph: Frederic J Brown\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Laufey L\u00edn Bing J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir always knew what it meant to work. She was born in Reykjav\u00edk to a mother who is a professional violinist for the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with maternal grandparents who are music professors. Aged four, Laufey began piano lessons, then added cello lessons at eight, cramming schoolwork around a dizzying schedule of rehearsals and performances. She credits that relentless regimen with giving her the strength \u2013 vocal, mental and muscular \u2013 to play for extended periods. When we meet, she\u2019s in the middle of a six-date summer run of orchestral shows across the eastern United States.<\/p>\n