She might be a social media-savvy 26-year-old who built her profile on TikTok, but musically, Icelandic singer-songwriter Laufey has more in common with the jazz-leaning artists of the past than many of her pop contemporaries.
Indeed, she’s just indicated to BBC Radio 2’s Vernon Kay that she’s also been taking performance, arrangement and production notes from some of the great musicians that inspired her by ensuring that her songs are full of light and shade rather than just crash, bang and wallop.
“Music in general right now I feel has lost the art of dynamics. There’s so much storytelling that can be embedded in a song through just having it very soft and then growing it,” she says. “Two choruses that are exactly the same can sound totally different if one is played soft and one is played very loud.
We’re sure that a lot of traditionalists will be able to get on board with this. The loudness war may have peaked, but there’s still a sense that a lot of big pop songs come in loud and never let up. Laufey, though, is a big fan of the slow build.
“My producer always jokes that when he looks at my vocal track it starts really small and throughout the track it just gets louder and louder,” she laughs. “It starts small and it ends big.”
It’s reasonable to assume that some of Laufey’s desire to stick to classic principles stems from her upbringing, and the diversity of the music she was exposed to.
“I remember, growing up, I thought adults didn’t listen to pop music, because my home was just filled with jazz and classical music – a lot of world music, too,” she explains. “And a lot of Brazilian music, too, which I think is one of the reasons I love writing in that style.”
There were downsides to all this variety, though – not least that it took a while for Laufey to truly find her musical identity.
“I grew up feeling so confused about who I was as a musician, because I felt like I had such a mixed background – a mixed cultural background but also a mixed musical background,” she confirms. “I love pop music but was studying jazz and classical, and I always felt like I had to pick a lane. But the two Grammys that I’ve won have been for albums where I’ve mixed all those things together and been able to be completely myself, and so that’s what the Grammy means to me the most – it’s just an award for being the most ‘me’ possible.”
Winning those awards, says Laufey, has made her feel liberated.
“I definitely feel like I haven’t had to follow any rules of anything,” she explains. “ I feel very free when I make music now, which is really lovely. I remember when I was just starting out, when I was uploading my first song on the internet, there were all these boxes and you were meant to tick the genre, and it was like ‘pop’, ‘singer-songwriter’, ‘jazz’, ‘classical’, and I was like, ‘I don’t know! I have no clue.’ And now I don’t think about that anymore.”
As well as being able to jump between genres, Laufey is also comfortable playing multiple instruments, giving her the luxury of being able to flip between them when she’s songwriting.
“I do a mix of piano and guitar,” she says. “Piano’s the instrument I grew up playing, so I’m a little more familiar. Guitar is sometimes fun for me because I’m not following these really strict rules that I’ve had since childhood, so I kinda just play around and it’s like ‘Ooh, I wonder what chord’s gonna come out?’”
As well as chatting, Laufey also performed in the BBC Radio 2 Piano Room, giving us two of her own songs – Lover Girl and new release How I Get – and a cover of Both Sides Now, the Joni Mitchell classic.
“I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs ever written,” she says. “I love Joni Mitchell, and these lyrics are just… everybody should study these lyrics. I think this is a perfect song.”
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