From Summer Issue 62
Glass sits down with the singer-songwriter Laufey to talk about breaking out of the box to produce a new album that reveals her true self
In a culture addicted to polish and perfection, Laufey is not chasing what’s pretty. The 25-year-old Icelandic-Chinese singer-songwriter and Grammy winner has become known for her silky blend of classic jazz, romantic storytelling and bedroom pop melancholia. But her upcoming album, A Matter of Time, is an evolution – a coming of age that’s both playful and primal.
“I feel like I spent so much of my life chasing beauty,” she says. “With this album, I was obsessed with the idea of not chasing what made me look or sound most beautiful, but what makes me look interesting and what sounds thought-provoking.”
Photograph: Graham Dunn
Laufey’s association with the coquette “ballerina-core” aesthetic belies this fresh direction – but isn’t the joy of music and fashion that they provide unending options for exploration and reinvention? Laufey is keenly aware of the triviality of beauty standards, “I don’t even know what they are anymore. I’ve died trying to chase them for years and I really wanted to let go of them.”
With the chokehold of what she should look and sound like loosened, Laufey comes into herself. The result is a sound that is extroverted and youthful, like the girl at the party whose dance moves are wild. You just know she’s having the most fun.
“I’m singing louder and with more riffs and runs, and with more conviction,” she adds, discussing her upcoming album. “And I’m screaming in some of them.”
Photograph: Graham Dunn
Born in Reykjavík and raised between Iceland, the US and, occasionally, China, Laufey’s worldview has always stretched far beyond one place. That fluidity underpins her lyricism, “Growing up all over the place has given me a sense of empathy for people around me. I know what it’s like to be a young woman in Europe, in America, in Asia … in a big city and a small town.”
Photograph: Graham Dunn
The gift of adaptability shows in her musical language, too. Classically trained on the cello and steeped in the sounds of Ella Fitzgerald and Chet Baker, Laufey’s early releases flirted with jazz and bossa nova with a diaristic touch. Her debut studio album, Everything I Know About Love (2022), and Grammy-winning follow-up Bewitched (2023) established her as one of the few artists reviving vocal jazz for Gen-Z ears.
Photograph: Graham Dunn
But this new chapter is a detour into the surreal. Her recent single Silver Lining is a soulful ballad dripping in vintage production and cheeky confession. The song’s inception is as spontaneous and dreamy as its riffs – Laufey was spending the day at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, poking around to see which instruments inspired her. She found an old guitar in the corner of the room. “The plug that the person used before me made this verby sound. It just made me want to sing riffs and runs, which I used to do a lot as a kid.”
The result is smoky, raw and theatrical. “We recorded live with all the instruments playing at once. That’s how you get that vintage sound. Back in the day, they didn’t have all the tools to isolate every instrument so aggressively.”
Photograph: Graham Dunn
The Silver Lining music video is a fever dream – paper-mâché masks, balletic choreography, surreal vignettes. Part of that shift meant embracing what’s offbeat. “We worked with this incredible choreographer Masha Cherezova, trained in Russia, on this kind of post-classical balletic movement that is a little more like folk dancing,” she recalls.
That impulse to reject the pristine feels radical in a landscape dominated by the algorithmic pulse of the male gaze. Laufey is clear on her stance, “I’ve never built a career off of catering to the male gaze,” she declares. “I’ve felt like a slave to my own gaze and the female gaze, living in LA and in this time of the internet.”
It’s a frustration rooted in the reality of constant scrutiny. Laufey is no stranger to fame and she’s only just beginning to fully grapple with its side effects. “I spend so much time worrying about how I look. I’m photographed every single night from every single corner of my body and I have no control over it.” She pauses. “It’s so exhausting. My heart hurts for young women right now.”
Photograph: Graham Dunn
There’s something quietly revolutionary in her choice not to conform. Now, she opts for looks that reflect “what I really feel like on the inside, not just what’s, you know, cool now”.
Still, she doesn’t shy away from humour. Her self-awareness is sharp and ever-present. Recently, she put up a billboard in Palm Springs before she performed at the Coachella music festival: “Still struggling with my name? Visit Saylaufey.com to learn.” It quickly went viral. “That whole thing was ridiculous,” she laughs. “It’s just so hard to pronounce my name … The only way to cope with it is to poke fun.”
Photograph: Graham Dunn
There’s a duality at the heart of Laufey’s world – between highbrow artistry and self-deprecating humour, between jazz clubs and walks in the forests of Iceland, between running around New York City and reading A Wrinkle in Time with her book club. Self-care, for her, is delightfully simple. “Movie nights with friends, going on morning walks … Getting lost in a book is always good.”
Reading, she said, has always been a secret portal to musical inspiration. “You never know what’s going to inspire you. It could be a word or a sentence, it sparks a whole train of thought.” When she’s not reading Donna Tartt (The Secret History is a favourite), Laufey’s watching The White Lotus on TV and dreaming up a future role. “I’m trying to rally for The White Lotus being in Iceland,” she says. “Imagine a murder in a hot spring … I’d love to play in something like that.”
Photograph: Graham Dunn
In the meantime, she’s focused on the tour ahead and the full album release. Laufey’s impatience is endearing, “I’ve never been good at lying or keeping secrets,” she admits. “Holding an album in is not great for me.”
For A Matter of Time, Laufey worked with her longtime collaborator Spencer Stewart, but this time, they were joined by Aaron Dessner. “It was nothing short of a dream,” she says. The team recorded between Electric Lady Studios in New York City and The Long Pond Studio in Upstate New York. “There was snow falling in the forest around us. Removing myself from the city was really helpful creatively.”
Photograph: Graham Dunn
When asked to describe her new sound with this album, Laufey settles on one word: “Whimsical. But in a weird way. I know I’ve said whimsical before, but now, I mean it in a true, weird way.” Tightly coiled expectations, the pressure to please, the curated perfection – all of it loosens in favor of something strange and free. The album is a reminder that beauty is often most powerful when it’s a little unruly. It’s the sound of an artist no longer asking for permission. A little wilder, a lot weirder and all the more wondrous for it.
by Christiana Alexakis
Photographer: Graham Dunn
Stylist: Anna Schilling
Makeup: Kara Yoshimoto Bua using DIOR BEAUTY
Hair: Eddie Cook
Manicurist: Yoko Sakaura using DIOR Manicure Collection, Le Baume and DIOR Vernis
Talent: Laufey
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