On the afternoon of August 13, a corner of New York was briefly transformed into a dreamscape of strings, storytelling, and sly humor, courtesy of Grammy Award-winning artist Laufey. In an intimate, invite-only Spotify pop-up at the Guggenheim, the Icelandic-Chinese musician treated her top listeners, and a few lucky bystanders, to a first-listen of songs from her forthcoming album A Matter of Time, out August 22. Backed by a grand piano, bassist, drummer, and a string quartet all wearing their finest orchestra black, Laufey opened with the live debut of the soothing “Clockwork” and closed with the effervescent fan favorite “From the Start.” The artist even gave us a hint of her trademark deadpan—she introduced the more confessional “Mr. Eclectic” as her “meanest song.”
Laufey’s mix of candor and whimsy comes out in her sound, equal parts jazz romanticism, narrative pop, and winking internet-age wit. Between musing on TikTok memes (“Laufeyette,” anyone?) and likening love to diving into a lake that might contain either a beautiful swim or a surprise catfish, she reveals an instinct for making the personal universal. As Gen Z’s shepherd into the world of jazz standards, Laufey doesn’t shy away from her mission to make the old feel urgent again. For the uninitiated, a crash-course on the pop sensation: she spent her childhood across Reykjavik, Iceland, where she was born, Washington, D.C., and Beijing (her mother grew up in Guangzhou), she has a twin named Júnía, she was a cello soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra at just 15 years old, studied music at Berkeley College of Music, and in 2021, the year she graduated, her debut EP Typical of Me had already been recommended in Rolling Stone. Since her debut, Laufey has signed to British music distributor AWAL, released three studio albums, including the Grammy-award winning Bewitched, and earned co-signs from the likes of Barbara Streisand and Billie Eilish. With A Matter of Time, she promises a record that flirts with joy, sadness, and even a hint of anxiety, all in the name of making you feel something. I met with the singer immediately following her Guggenheim takeover to talk about her many inspirations, lyrical, narrative, and vibes-based.
Maya Kotomori: If A Matter of Time could be captured in a scene from any other cinematic universe, vibe or TV show, what would it be?
Laufey: It would be that scene in Cinderella, when she realizes that it’s about to turn midnight. She’s running, shoes falling off. And then the carriage turns into a pumpkin, and then the pumpkin’s falling apart, and she makes it home just in time. That’s what the album feels like.
You’ve mentioned before that you use your notes app as a kind of songbook. What’s your most recent note that helped inspire a song, or became a song?
Let me jog my memory…[phone materializes] Ok, so I was on a lake [laughs]. I was thinking about a deep dive, like diving into a lake and taking that chance to fall in love, and you don’t know what’s going to meet you in the lake, but, chances are you’ll have a beautiful swim. Maybe a gigantic catfish will come and be like… [pantomimes catfish attack]. But I thought that was a good analogy for falling in love.
What is your most unexpected TikTok comment or fan interaction that made your day better, or worse, or was just hilarious and irreverent to you?
So many hilarious and irreverent ones, I feel like I actually see hundreds a day! The TikTok comment section is my personal comedy. I recently did a Hamilton TikTok, and somebody created a photo of me with my face on Lafayette’s [body] and then wrote ‘Laufeyette’ over it. And now that photo comes up quite a lot, so I thought that was pretty funny.
What’s your relationship to musical theater? Do you have a favorite?
American in Paris. I love old musicals. But I’m also a big fan of Waitress. People that think musicals are lame, but most jazz standard songs come from musicals.
You play piano, cello, guitar; you could clone yourself and be your own orchestra. What is your go-to instrument when you need to jot down a song idea?
Either a piano or guitar. I feel like guitar is good because it’s quite soft, and I don’t like to over-embellish. I’m a lot better at piano because I actually grew up playing it, so sometimes I end up over-embellishing. If I really just want to jot down a simple idea and not overthink it, it’s guitar.
F-, marry, kill: narrative, lyric or jazz standard?
I’d marry narrative because whether it’s a bad or a good narrative, I’ll always find a way to romanticize that. F- a jazz standard. And I don’t want to kill a lyric, but lyrics are nothing without a narrative, so unfortunately, I’ll be killing the lyric.
Your music has become a gateway for Gen Z into jazz. Is that something that was intentional, or is that just how your life has bled into music?
It was a little bit of both. I always loved seeing jazz and I loved jazz standards. And whenever I love something, I want everyone to love it too. At first I would post jazz standards on social media, just because that’s what I sing like. That’s the music that fits the best in my register, and I feel really makes my heart sing as well. I think after a couple months of doing it, I realized that it was drawing young audiences towards jazz, like the songs I was writing. And then I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I could convince some people that this is cool.’ My music is such a mix of different things, so I hope it can be like a gateway.
What do you really want fans and new listeners alike to take away from this new project, as opposed to your other studio albums?
I really hope that they feel moved by it, whether it’s joy or tears or even a little bit of anxiety. I’m all about allowing you to feel your feelings.