The first time I saw Laufey in Dallas, the fire alarms went off the second she stepped on stage. We had to evacuate, the crowd grumbling into the Texas night. When we came back in, she delivered one of the best sets I’ve ever seen, like the interruption only sharpened her edge.
This time it was Fort Worth. Bigger room, bigger lights, bigger crowd. Laufey walked out, looked at the ocean of faces and confessed, “I have imposter syndrome.” A reminder that even when you have Grammys on the shelf, the voice in your head still talks trash.
For those who don’t know the backstory, Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir was born in Reykjavík in 1999 to an Icelandic father and a Chinese mother. Music was baked into her DNA: Her mother is a professional violinist, and her grandfather taught at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. By 4 she was at the piano, by 8 on cello and by 15 she was soloing with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
Her early exposure came through TV talent shows: “Island Got Talent” and “The Voice Iceland.” Then came Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she studied cello and her voice, sharpening her ear for jazz harmony and songwriting. The real breakout came with TikTok and Instagram. Posting standards and original songs to an audience of restless teenagers, she made the “Great American Songbook” go viral.
From there the climb was fast. Her debut EP, “Typical of Me” (2021), set the stage with a mix of standards and originals. “Everything I Know About Love “(2022) expanded her reach. Then “Bewitched” in 2023 — the record that won her a Grammy for best traditional pop vocal album and blew the doors open. By the time “Bewitched: The Goddess Edition,” dropped she was the face of a movement. Critics started talking about her as “Gen Z’s gateway to jazz,” a heavy crown for a 20-something still figuring herself out.
Her new record, “A Matter of Time”, released on Aug. 22, is her most ambitious yet. With Aaron Dessner of The National helping on production, Laufey builds orchestral walls and then threads her voice through the cracks. At times the strings are so lush you want to swim in them; to others, they threaten to drown the intimacy that makes her tick. However, that tension is part of the charm.
She’s still writing about doubt, heartbreak and identity, but with sharper teeth. “Snow White” drags impossible beauty standards into the light. “Lover Girl” is fizzy on the surface but sly underneath, twisting the idea of who gets to be desirable; then there’s “Clean Air,” a country-tinged single that sounds like she wandered out of a Nashville bar with a jazz degree in her back pocket.
Is it jazz? That’s the question critics keep chewing on. Purists roll their eyes, but listen closely to the ii-V-I progressions, the phrasing, the fragile hush in her scatting, it’s all there. It is repackaged for a generation who would rather find it on Spotify than in a smoke-choked club. She’s not Ella Fitzgerald reborn, but she doesn’t need to be. She’s Laufey, and she’s dragging jazz and traditional pop forward whether the gatekeepers like it or not.
For me, certain tracks hang heavy. “Promise” from her earlier catalog still guts me every time. It is the kind of song you can only write with lived experience. “Goddess” captures the whiplash of being idolized one moment and human the next. Now, “Clean Air” signals she’s restless, not content to stay in the polite corner critics might box her into.
Live, the songs hit differently. In Fort Worth, the audience, mostly teens and preteens, shrieking like they’d just discovered jazz was something you could feel in your chest, knew every word. I stood among them, a 36-year-old Denton jazz rat, equal parts awkward and proud.
“A Matter of Time” isn’t flawless. Some tracks clash, some production choices feel overstuffed. But flaws don’t matter much when the through-line is honesty, Laufey is at her best when she risks imperfection, when she shows her seams.
From a fire alarm in Dallas to a sold-out Fort Worth stage, her arc feels inevitable now. She may wrestle with doubt, but the rest of us are already convinced. Laufey isn’t saving jazz, or pop, or whatever label you slap on it. She’s just making music worth listening to and definitely seeing in person.
