In spending the last year or so attempting to broaden my music taste, I have stumbled upon one of my new favorite artists: Laufey.
Laufey (pronounced “Lay-vay”) was born in 1999 to a Chinese mother and Icelandic father, and grew up surrounded by music. Her grandfather taught violin in China, and her mother is a world class violinist. At an extremely young age, she was learning how to play both the violin and piano, which is no surprise given her classically trained background. Laufey even played cello solos with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and placed second on Iceland’s Got Talent.
Laufey, 15, performing at Iceland’s Got Talent
While at Berklee, prior to the shut down caused by the coronavirus pandemic, she recorded a song. It was a song about the heartbreak she was experiencing that she chose to release despite everything going on in the weeks after. “Street by Street”, to her surprise, rose to the top of the charts in Iceland. Laufey has said that her goal is to “...bring jazz and classical music to my generation through a more accessible road.” This is not at all surprising, due to her love for jazz despite her classical training. In fact, “Street by Street” is paired with minimal guitar accompaniment in the jazz style.
Her decision to release her song despite everything going on in the world reminded me a lot of Rubin’s comments about following one’s intuition to do what you feel is necessary for your career, even if everyone is telling you that you should not or you yourself are not completely sure. It also, due to the personal nature of the song, shows aspects of her inner world and how she processed the heartbreak at the time.
Laufey, on the cover her most recent album, Bewitched
Now based in LA, Laufey has released many albums, the most recent of which came out in 2023, entitled Bewitched. She has also had the opportunity to perform on Jimmy Kimmel LIVE! in 2022 with the release of her first studio album. Everything I Know About Love also led her to a sold out tour across continents and to being the most streamed jazz artist on Spotify in 2022.
Throughout each album, she continues to employ the same techniques and ideas in new and exciting ways, always letting fans into her inner world. Laufey allows everyone a new way to experience both jazz and classical music.
Sources:
https://www.berklee.edu/berklee-now/news/whos-laufey-now
https://www.laufeymusic.com/about
I think it is so interesting when new artists bring different genres of music into mainstream culture, as Laufey is doing with jazz. I think it is so refreshing to see different types of music popularized rather than the same tired formulas of past pop. I am sure that the pandemic influenced her music, as it has with many other artists. It is interesting to witness the aftermath of artists' creative pandemic work and to see how it differs so greatly from artist to artist.
ReplyDeleteI simply had to give some of Laufey's songs another listen-- and though I can't necessarily hear the jazz, in works like "Promise" the orchestral backing is incredible-- there's subtle piano and strings there. I'm not familiar enough with jazz to be able to listen for it, but I do think that there is something like an emerging genre-- I would group the works of Laufey, Mitski, and Lana del Rey together, mostly for a sort of melancholic feel their works have overall. I'm fairly sure Spotify would as well-- which brings into discussion how exactly we categorize music, which gets foggier the more genre-blurring artists we have.
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