A Celebration of Modern Girlhood, Laufey Brings Jazz to a New Generation

When I sit down to talk to Laufey, it’s been a little over 72 hours since Taylor Swift released her highly anticipated album The Tortured Poets Department, and the ascending Icelandic-Chinese jazz singer admits she hasn’t listened to all 31 tracks just yet. But she’s got a pretty good excuse, one that Swift can probably empathize with. She recently embarked on a world tour in support of her Grammy Award–winning album, Bewitched, and late last month released a dreamy deluxe edition, Bewitched: The Goddess Version, unveiling four new songs that infuse her youthful sensibilities with a timeless genre. Which means that even though she found herself in New Orleans yesterday and Atlanta this morning, she’ll go to sleep tonight, if only for a few hours, in Nashville, after taking the stage at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in a pink cowboy hat, on her 25th birthday no less.

But so far the classically trained musician from Reykjavík surmises that Swift’s album is about being a performer on the road, falling in and out of love, and well, she’s finding it applicable to her own life at the moment. “Personally, shockingly, I am one of the very few people who can relate to the specifics,” Laufey (pronounced lay-vay) tells Vanity Fair via Zoom, from a green room, befittingly.

“I’ve literally felt that before, where I’m like, okay, put on a smile, lights, camera, action, bitch. Just get out onstage and do it,” she says, referencing the lyrics to Swift’s “the show must go on” anthem, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

It’s advice that will come in handy on the road this year, as Laufey sets out on a mission to introduce jazz to Gen Z audiences around the world. “My hope is that [my music] can be a gateway drug for people to listen [to jazz] and understand a bit of it through the lens of someone that’s their age,” she says. Lamenting on growing up, her lyricism brings her mesmerizing alto, which calls to mind Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, firmly into the 21st century. “I have to get off Instagram / I keep on going back / Looking at our memories / I know you will soon delete,” she confesses over an arrangement of strings in the song “Someone New,” off her 2021 EP, Typical of Me. “It’s so special to hear a room full of thousands of kids who are usually between 15 and 25 screaming along to jazz standards,” she says.

Born Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir, her mother was a professional violinist who moved from Beijing to perform in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. “I was literally in the womb onstage at orchestra rehearsals,” she jokes. “I think the second I could stand I was handed a violin.” At four years old she started playing piano, and at eight she began cello lessons. Splitting her adolescence between Beijing (where her musician grandparents reside), Iceland, and Washington, DC, Laufey, a self-described “odd third-culture child” spent most of her time at the music conservatory, with her twin sister Junia, who now serves as her creative director. “[Music] was like breathing,” she says. “It was just a part of life.”

After competing as a finalist in Ísland Got Talent and semifinalist in The Voice Iceland, she pursued a music degree at Berklee College of Music in Boston, releasing her debut album, Everything I Know About Love, in 2022, shortly after graduating. Still, she never anticipated mainstream audiences to embrace her in the way they have in the last two years. “I couldn’t decently expect any kind of success in this way just because there weren’t many examples of it before,” she says of her classical-jazz-pop crossover, though she does mention Norah Jones, with whom she released a two-track Christmas single last year.

Her budding career culminated in February at the Grammys, where, as a first-time nominee, she beat out industry veterans and icons like Bruce Springsteen for best traditional pop vocal album. “I was genuinely stunned,” she says. “I felt like I’d already won by being nominated. I was ready to be a Grammy-nominated singer forever. That is enough for me.” Accepting the award in a baby pink polka-dot Chanel gown, she humbly introduced herself to the star-studded crowd, “Hi, I’m Laufey,” before thanking the classical and jazz communities that raised her. That same night she accompanied Billy Joel on the cello and met the aforementioned Swift. “That day was absurd,” she says. “I hope no one thinks that I thought this day was normal because it was not.”

Her win was emblematic of a historic night, where women dominated the major categories. It’s not lost on her that her music, and the community she has built around it (her fans call themselves Lauvers), have come to be a celebration of girlhood. On TikTok, Laufey has amassed nearly 5 million followers, where she actively engages with her audience, posting silly, viral videos, often set to her own music. Arrive early to one of her shows and you’ll witness that community come to life, swarms of girls in bows and Mary Janes filming fit checks dressed just like Laufey, trading books like friendship bracelets, as encouraged by her very own online book club. “Every single time I see one of those TikToks of girls piling into my concert wearing white dresses and bows in their hair, I’m like, that was my childhood dream,” says Laufey. “It really always makes me a little bit emotional.” It’s reflective of a bigger moment in culture, coming off the heels of Barbie mania, and the collective economic stimulus brought on by female touring powerhouses like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. “It’s the first time in a long time where it feels really strong to celebrate being a girl,” she explains.

What Laufey has come to represent, not only to young women, but especially to young Asian women, is overwhelmingly important to her. Last month she collaborated with Academy Award nominee Celine Song, who wrote and directed Past Lives, on the music video for her single “Goddess.” The video, which stars Laufey alongside Heartstopper leading man William Gao, puts two Asian performers at the center of a complex romance, a rarity, as Laufey points out. “I definitely see my role as somebody who is of Asian descent and gets to have opportunities where I can highlight Asian voices like that, and show kids in the audience that this is entirely a possibility and something that they deserve and that is normal and not some sort of exception,” she says. “I hope it was another building block for those opportunities to happen for anybody.”

It’d be easy to label the jazz singer in vintage-inspired clothing with a book club as an old soul, wise beyond her years, but she’s still just growing up. And when we speak, it’s the eve of a milestone birthday for Laufey. “Everything that I never thought would happen happened while I was 24. It was a good age,” she says with a grin. But there’s a hesitance in her voice when she envisions what the year ahead will bring. She hopes to stay positive and dreams of getting enough sleep back home in Los Angeles. But 25 feels old, she admits reluctantly. “I hope I can always hold on to a sense of youth,” she says.