Jazz and bossa nova have found an unexpected new audience, thanks to an equally unexpected source: Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir, the 26-year-old, Icelandic-Chinese, professionally trained alto known as Laufey, who has won over Gen Z with her contemporary take on these classic genres.
Since rising to fame on TikTok during the coronavirus lockdown, she’s racked up more than six million Instagram followers, won a Grammy Award, and become a darling of the fashion world. She’s now getting ready to release her third album, A Matter of Time, out on August 22—and with it, she’s shedding the sweet, innocent image that once defined her.
“I was interested in seeing how I could draw out the most flawed parts of myself,” she says of the record, which delves into the darkness and anxiety often entwined with love. While the themes in her work have evolved, one thing remains constant: her sensational technique, which pairs her unrestrained voice with complex arrangements.
Born and raised in Reykjavík, Laufey doesn’t remember a life without music. “I would say the Chinese side is where I get [it] from,” she says. Taught by her mother, a violinist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and grandparents, both music teachers, she learned to play piano and cello from an early age. “I think it taught me a certain level of discipline, stamina, and hard work,” she adds.
Unlike most kids her age, who watched the Disney Channel and cartoons, Laufey was drawn to classic Hollywood musicals such as Ziegfeld Follies and On the Town. Her musical tastes were similarly distinct, combining popular contemporary artists like Taylor Swift and Sara Bareilles with the voices of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Carole King, all of whom taught her how the female voice could be used to tell personal stories.
By the age of 15, Laufey had performed her first cello solo at the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and made it to the finals of the music contest Ísland Got Talent, but the prospect of international stardom still felt out of reach. “It seemed just so far away from my world,” she says. Still, she knew music would always be a part of her life. In 2018, she moved to Boston after receiving the prestigious Presidential Scholarship to the Berklee College of Music.
The pandemic shut down Berklee’s campus during her junior year and, like many bored twentysomethings stuck at home, she turned to TikTok. There, her deep, honeyed voice, accompanied by her own guitar and cello playing, serenaded viewers with songs from a bygone era, like Etta James’s “Stormy Weather.” Fans, who call themselves “Lauvers,” quickly took to her, drawn to her personable videos, which highlight her girly style, sharp humor, and whimsy—a quality she credits to her Icelandic side. Often, she appears joking and dancing alongside her identical twin sister, Junia, a classical violinist who frequently performs with Laufey and acts as her creative director.
Within a year, nearly 250,000 TikTok followers had taken notice of her unique sound. In 2021, Laufey signed with awal, a label for independent artists, and released a seven-track E.P. that included her debut single, “Street by Street,” a tender melody about recovering from heartbreak. “The reason I’m able to do what I do now is because I put videos on the Internet for people to see and to hear,” she says. “The audience decided that they liked it, and then the industry decided that they were O.K. with it.”
She released her first studio album, Everything I Know About Love, in 2022, followed by Bewitched the following year, for which she won the Grammy for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2024. Her most popular song, “From the Start,” now has more than 750,000,000 streams on Spotify. While the idea of a jazz-classical-pop blend might seem unlikely for a Gen Z audience, Laufey has fully embraced the eccentric genre, having recorded two live albums with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as a duet with Barbra Streisand.
Ahead of her upcoming North American arena tour, with Suki Waterhouse opening, the singer-songwriter reflects on the road that brought her to this point: “All music is TikTok music. You have Connie Francis songs from the 1950s blowing up, brand-new songs blowing up, and a Coldplay song from 15 years ago becoming popular,” she says. “It all happens through TikTok.”
A Matter of Time will release on August 22. Laufey will tour the United States and Canada from September 15 to October 27
Gracie Wiener is the Social Media Manager at AIR MAIL
