Gen Z sensation Laufey is targeting a new peak in the wake of her Grammy Award-winning success as she gets set to launch her third album.
The Icelandic-Chinese singer-songwriter, who covers our May edition, played headline shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London, LA's Hollywood Bowl and New York's Radio City Music Hall in 2024.
She also won a Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal album for her second studio LP, 2023's Bewitched, which has 64,018 UK sales according to Official Charts data, but has even bigger goals in sight.
“That’s how I got to where I am,” said Laufey, speaking to Music Week in a tell-all interview. “Once I have played the 1,000-cap venue in a city, I’m excited to play the 4,000-cap venue the next year. I’ll hopefully be playing arenas soon. And I don’t want to play venues bigger than an arena, so it’s going to have to stop somewhere.”
Following her huge breakthrough year, the 25-year-old has completed work on her as-yet-untitled third record and recently released its first single, Silver Lining.
“The reason I chose it as the first single is that it’s a good example of what the album is in terms of material,” she said. “It’s not necessarily sonically exactly the same, but it’s very much my writing.
“I’ve not been as strict when it comes to exploring sounds or genres. The common thread with the whole album is that it’s my experience. There wasn’t really a classic co-write and that’s the thing that brings the album together, that it’s my writing, my voice, and lots of me playing cello. The songs all have little different personalities, but they’re all the personalities that come out when you’re in love.”
I literally don’t know anybody who listens to one genre. You can be a fan of so many different artists at once
Laufey
The jazz-influenced pop artist stressed that the traditional rules of genre no longer apply in the contemporary music business.
“Nobody listens to one genre,” she reasoned. “I literally don’t know anybody who listens to one genre. You can be a fan of so many different artists at once."
A former student of Boston’s Berklee College Of Music, Laufey spoke warmly of label partner AWAL and stressed the importance of being in charge of her own musical destiny.
“There are artists who go into the music industry who have no clue what a master even is and I was so aware of a song being something that I created, and it felt wrong to pass it off to someone else,” she said.
“I didn’t think that there was anybody at any label who would understand my audience and this kind of very narrow niche that I found as well as I did,” she says. “Once I met Max [Gredinger], my manager, he had been working with artists at AWAL for years. I was ecstatic because he has the same goals as I do and cares about me retaining creative control and retaining ownership over my music.”
The classically trained musician born Laufey Jónsdóttir has more than 14 million monthly listeners on Spotify, as well as 8.1m followers and 307m likes on TikTok, having become a viral smash on the latter platform in 2020.
“I write honestly and earnestly from the heart,” she said. “I think I connect with a lot of young women and young women who are often from more diverse backgrounds that maybe feel like they’ve been othered. I am, to the core, that. I grew up in a very homogeneous, Icelandic community being very different in many different ways.
"I think simply being one of those people and finding success and continuing to write my story is hopefully inspiring, but also proof that dreams can come true, even if it’s not something that seems super obvious.”
It’s weird, because I never thought I’d experience the level of success of a song like From The Start
Laufey
Laufey's biggest-selling single in the UK to date is 2023's From The Start (279,185 sales).
“It’s weird, because I never thought I’d experience the level of success of a song like From The Start,” she said. “It’s not really something you expect when you go into a career making the kind of music I make. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t something that entered my mind, like, ‘How do I keep the momentum going?’ But those thoughts only affect you when you’re thinking about the album.
"Once I’m making the songs, those thoughts don’t affect me because I’m writing the music that I’m writing in the moment and I’m making the songs that feel right in the moment. I’ve never sat down and been like, ‘I’m gonna write a pop hit today,’ that’s not a mindset that I wanted to get used to. The thing is, From The Start is still my song and it’s not going anywhere, no matter what.”
She also commented on her friendship with fellow female pop stars Olivia Rodrigo and Beabadoobee.
“We’re all Asian girls around the same age who write about boys!” she laughed. “But it’s a very good example of a Gen Z woman, or a Gen Z listener. I could easily find a person that listens to all three of us, even though we’re so extremely different.
"There’s so many more layers to people than people might think – you listen to me on a sad day, you listen to Olivia on a day where you’re feeling angry, you listen to Bea on a happy day or an anxious day. I think being a woman in the industry is something that we talk about, but they’re both really real people. I really like their company. Both of them feel like people I’d be friends with if we weren’t musicians.”
The full interview with Laufey, Foundations Management and AWAL can be read in the new issue of Music Week.
