Gen Z musician Laufey is redefining jazz for teenage girls in their twenties

“You can admit that you feel like the world is crumbling, even though a guy might not have responded to your text.”

Laufey is eating what looks like chicken wings when I enter our Zoom call. Sitting in her Los Angeles home, she’s a few weeks away from the release of her album, Bewitched. It’s been a whirlwind month – she cracked 10 million Spotify monthly listeners, her single ‘Falling Behind’ climbed the charts of TikTok fame and she was featured in the pages of Vogue Scandinavia’s September issue.

For the 24-year-old Chinese-Icelandic woman, it’s a world away from her teen days on the stages of Ísland Got Talent and The Voice Iceland. Since birth – even since being in her mother’s womb – she’s been surrounded by music, but now, Laufey is stepping into her own.

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It’s close to impossible to name any other Gen Z musician who’s also a composer, singer, producer and multi-instrumentalist, let alone one that’s in the jazz-pop realm. But for Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir, jazz and classical music are her bread and butter. Everyone from me – a fellow 24-year-old Chinese woman – to my boyfriend’s 57-year-old dad and 16-year-old Melbourne eshays, have found a peculiar kinship and attachment to Laufey’s musical genius.

Her 14-track new album is an extension of her debut album. “Everything I Know About Love is kind of a joke or spin on the word because the album’s really about knowing nothing about love,” Laufey tells me. “With [Bewitched], I’m learning… Love is messy, but it’s the best thing in the world.”

Before Laufey even started the process of creating music for this album, she already knew she wanted it to be called Bewitched. “I don’t know why, I just thought ‘bewitched’ was such a perfect jazzy word to describe that confusing feeling when you’re crazy in love, or you think you’re falling in love and you feel like you’re like under a spell.”

As a big Taylor Swift fan (we parry lyrics to each other throughout the interview), Laufey has undoubtedly been influenced by Taylor’s theatrical and meticulously curated artistry. Ahead of the album release, Laufey posted a crossword for fans to unscramble to reveal its tracklist. Days before the release, she ‘leaked’ her entire album herself by releasing the sheet music for the songs.

Globally on September 10, there will be ‘A Very Laufey Day’ where fans are encouraged to participate in a Laufey-approved day, with activities ranging from scouring a bookshop, going secondhand shopping and visiting a local park (Melbourne has one of 11 personalised, local itineraries).

Everything she does is twinged with romance. “The way I write my songs is very much like my journal entries. When you’re journaling, that’s when you can be the most vulnerable with yourself. You can admit that you feel like the world is crumbling, even though a guy might not have responded to your text,” she confesses.

“It’s kind of a battle, you know, I never want to admit that I go through those feelings, but I think a lot of people do. I don’t think we should be afraid to admit those emotions. It’s very human.” As a chronic listener of Laufey, one of my favourite aspects of her music is how seriously she takes these typically ‘girl’ experiences and emotions.

Being a teenage girl can feel like the entire spectrum of human emotion has been condensed down into your palm. Laufey unlocks a way to make sense of it (even if you’re definitely in your mid-twenties). “The way I see it is if I go through an experience that hurts me in some way or makes me sad, writing a song about it… is almost like putting a bandaid on it, [it] makes me feel a lot better,” she says.

“I don’t want to skip out on the parts that hurt as well. I kind of get a kick out of making it very specific. I haven’t been too mean yet, but we’ll see. In the words of Taylor Swift, ‘If guys don’t want me to write mean songs about them, then they shouldn’t be mean’.”

There’s a self-assuredness that radiates from Laufey. Perhaps it’s because she’s grown up in a household where music was accepted – no, encouraged – as a career path. “I was literally sitting at symphony rehearsals in my mother’s womb, like on stage. [Music] has just always been there,” she says.

Laufey started learning piano at age four, before some kids start school. Her mum is a classical violinist and gave Laufey and her twin sister, Junia, a violin at age seven. Her dad is a huge jazz fan, meaning brass instruments formed the soundtrack of her upbringing.

Visiting her grandparents’ house in Beijing (her grandfather was a violin educator), Laufey became accustomed to various people coming in and out of the home to have lessons with her grandfather. “Me and my twin sister and my mother would be practising on three ends of the house [almost] every day… I’m so lucky, I’ve never had to fight [to] be a musician. It was never a conversation.”

Junia is not only her identical twin but someone deeply involved in the worldbuilding of Laufey. Working at Universal Music Group in creative brand partnerships, Junia also wears the hats of creative director, violinist and photographer for Laufey’s various creative projects (most recently creative directing the music video for ‘From The Start’).

“It’s incredible. It’s really rare and special to have someone I trust, I trust her vision so much,” Laufey says when asked about their working relationship. “We almost speak a different language, we’re so locked in… She’s really funny. I think she’s the funniest person I know.”

One time in elementary school, as the only two Asian people in their school, they decided to pull a Parent Trap and swap places. “It was so underwhelming because nobody even noticed… Nobody cared, nobody even talked to us during the class.”

Growing up pinballing between Reykjavik in Iceland and Washington, D.C pulled Laufey’s ethnicity into focus, whether she liked it or not. “There are very, very few foreigners and very few Asians [in Iceland]. Just by nature of walking into a room, you stick out and you’re different,” she says. Having spent time in the States only added to her foreignness and “loud[ness].”

When she moved to California to attend Berkeley College, it was the first time she was able to “engage with being Asian”. “In Iceland, I felt different, I didn’t feel Asian, but here, I get to be a part of the community and I get to enjoy that side of myself and identify with that part of myself.”

Her track ‘Letter To My 13 Year Old Self’ is a gutwrenching meditation on the complicated and painful journey of growing up as a young Asian woman in a predominately White community. It’s a song that, upon every listen, makes me cry.

Laufey says it took her two seconds to write because it was simply an earnest pouring out of emotion to her younger self. “In the last verse, I write, ‘One day you’ll be up on stage and little girls will scream your name’. When I wrote that, I started bawling profusely… That one always takes me out. Every time I hear it, I’m like, ‘Oh my god’.”

What makes her proudest though, is being able to stick to her jazz and classical roots. “I hope to keep the integrity of the old sounds but breathe new life through it with modern experiences and modern stories,” Laufey says. “Those old jazz standards were written by old men in the ’30s and in the ’40s. A lot of different things are going through a 24-year-old’s brain.”

Bewitched is out of September 8, 2023. To keep up to date with Laufey, head here.