Laufey

I always had a very specific way or style of singing that definitely felt like it was something from an older time.

I just love playing the piano, isn't it lovely?

I'm breaking so many rules every single day, and I think that's where you make good music.

You have to learn to unlearn, I am a true believer in that.

I would love to win a Grammy.

I never expected to be on the cover of a magazine.

I'm just going to keep making the music I want and hope that it reaches as many ears as possible.

When I started out, people were always asking me, 'Who do you want to be like?' I had no idea what to say.

Sometimes you put a song on TikTok and it does well because it's visually stimulating or it has a hooky lyric, but it won't go past that.

My mom could tell that I had a natural inclination for music.

I'm very confident in my music.

With the kind of music I make, I make very individualistic choices.

If anything, I thought I would go the conservatory route, practice cello and try to get into the best orchestra I could, like my mother did.

I think music was always written in the stars for me. I feel like I really had no choice. If I dared to walk down another path, the universe would push me back towards music.

I love Scandinavian brands from growing up in Iceland.

I think the flea markets in L.A. are the best shopping; otherwise, I shop a lot when I'm in Europe.

I write the best when I'm sitting on my couch.

I love vintage designer bags that are at a good price.

I would say I take a lot of inspiration from jazz and I borrow a lot of principles from it and classical music. Both of those genres are rigid, and I've broken so many rules - I don't improvise the way a lot of jazz musicians do, and a lot of the chord progressions I use don't technically make sense.

Classical music was very much a part of my life growing up, and it was always playing in the house. And music was almost like another class in school. Every day, I'd come home and do an hour of piano and cello.

Jazz music is all about performance, right? At least, to me, it's about the freedom of performance, the different inflections you do in the moment and the improvisations.

A large portion of my audience is younger - audiences that would primarily listen to pop music otherwise - so the fact that they're coming to my concerts is really special.

Jazz is all about that. It's bending things and breaking away from what's on the page and improvising.

My whole life has been in classical music, I've been trained to become the best musician possible, play the piece the best, play the notes on the page the best.

Obviously, I want to be taken seriously as a musician.

I knew I was half Chinese, but Iceland is so homogenous that I wasn't able to identify with the Asian part of myself. Even though I speak Chinese and was raised by Chinese women, I would say I'm quite white-passing when it comes to being Asian.

I love a rainy day playlist.

I think people care a lot more about mood and feeling than they do genre.

TikTok gives an artist a voice. I'm very careful to be very authentic on there - everything I do comes from me, nobody ever tells me to make TikToks. I do everything on my own, and all the language is my own. And I wouldn't do it if someone was telling me to do it! It has to come from the heart, but I think it can give artists their own voice.

I hope I'm doing my part in making jazz and classical music more accessible!

I think jazz is a bit gatekept. Personally, I think that everyone has space in them to enjoy jazz and jazz-adjacent music. It just hasn't been presented in a way that seems like it's for everyone.

I don't speak Cantonese. My grandparents always spoke Cantonese together and my mother speaks a bit of Cantonese, but unfortunately I don't.

I went to Berklee for college: a good musical training ground, but there's no direct line between that and the music industry.

What TikTok and social media did for me was give me an even chance to pitch myself to the world. And for that, I can't take it for granted.

I have to live to write. But I try to discipline myself into writing on the spot as well. I think it's a misconception that you just have to wait for inspiration to strike you. I think musicians and writers can train themselves to see inspiration on the spot. And that's one of the greatest tools you can develop as a songwriter.

It is a funny thing to step on stage and wear beautiful clothing and lots of makeup and stand in front of thousands of fans and be depicted as this goddess, this character.

I always say I became the musician that I wanted and needed.

I'm so proud of being Asian and getting to connect with that side of myself is so special.

I would sing in public, and everyone would be like, 'She's got the voice of a divorced woman in the body of a 13-year-old girl.' I never felt pretty or light or young. I always felt very foreign, different, and heavy. I felt like I was a circus freak. It's so loaded for a young girl to hear.

I took classical music very seriously as a kid.

That's the fun of songwriting. You can make it whatever you want.

Everything I record, I end up putting out. You hear about artists with hundreds of songs in their archive, and I have zero songs in my vault. Because I don't have a single song that I haven't heard someone claim as their favorite. And if I wrote it, I'm usually pretty happy with it.

I was lucky to have a wide view of the world from a young age. I knew there was more than just the confines of my own little Icelandic or American bubble. It was so much bigger than that.

As a kid, I was running around the conservatory, playing with my grandparents' students who were like babysitters, taking cello and piano lessons, eating good food, and making sure I didn't completely forget my Chinese every summer.

My songwriting is just journaling out my life via song.

You can speak something into existence or sing something into existence.

That's why I always strive to make timeless, almost a bit cinematic music, because I guess I was looking for an escape and I found that through music.

I started writing more like Bossa Nova style songs after moving to L.A.

I felt like my hobbies were so different from my peers, that I came off as an extremely loud person. But then by being shy, I just felt like I hindered myself from becoming the individual that I wanted to be.

I've almost had to prove myself to Icelandic people. Living in such an isolated space, it gives you this innate sense of wanderlust, and dreaming for something much bigger.