Upon first listen, Laufey's smooth jazz music might sound nostalgic, but make no mistake: The Icelandic 24-year-old isn't some retro-revivalist who was born in the wrong era. She's a musician who could only exist in this generation.
Steeped in jazz and classical music since her childhood, Laufey has performed with symphony orchestras, but she also writes confessional lyrics about dating, staying out late and going through breakups. Imagine the sort of lyrics that wouldn't be out of place in a pop song.
Her parents gifted her a violin practically as soon as she could walk, but Laufey says she didn't discover her distinctive voice until she was around 12 years old.
"I already had quite a low timbre in my voice at that age, and I remember feeling a little off about it," she tells World Cafe during her visit to WXPN's studios. "It didn't feel like I had a Taylor Swift or a Miley Cyrus voice. I definitely had a voice that felt more in the direction of Peggy Lee or Julie London."
Despite her affinity to vocalists of a bygone era, Laufey's approach to jazz — not to mention her millions of TikTok followers — has helped draw younger audiences to the genre.
"When you find something that you like within the realms of jazz, just lean in and listen to it and enjoy it," she says. "If something's too confusing for you or you don't understand it, you don't have to force yourself to listen to it for the sake of understanding jazz. It's just like pop music — you listen to one artist, you don't like it; it doesn't mean you hate pop music as whole."
In this session, Laufey touches more on reaching new listeners, plus she talks about her latest album, Bewitched. It quickly followed her 2022 debut Everything I Know About Love, and it's been nominated for best traditional pop vocal album at the Grammys.
Laufey also talks about collaborating with beabadoobee on the song "A Night To Remember" and how the pair bonded over their biracial heritages.
"There aren't many Asian women in the kind of singer-songwriter, indie space," she says. "When we were younger, we didn't have many people to look up to, and we definitely have a lot of Asians in our fan base, both mine and Bea's. It's cool to see this community that I, at least, did not have growing up, come together."
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.
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