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LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Long before the Icelandic Chinese artist Laufey became recognized the world over for her neoclassical jazz-meets-pop music, she was a student, answering a familiar yearbook prompt: \u201cWhere do you see yourself in 10 years?\u201d<\/p>\n
Her answer: Move to the U.S., sign a record deal and win a Grammy.<\/a> The 26-year-old has done all three.<\/p>\n \u201cI must have been so confident to write that because I remember that being a very far-sought kind of thing,\u201d the musician born Laufey L\u00edn J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n Those aren’t her only accomplishments: She’s collaborated with Barbra Streisand<\/a>, shared the stage with Hozier<\/a>, Noah Kahan<\/a> and the Los Angeles Philharmonic<\/a>. An unexpected nonconformist to the rules of contemporary pop, Laufey’s third album, \u201cA Matter of Time\u201d out Friday, pulls inspiration from country and Icelandic folk music as well as classical and bossa nova sounds.<\/p>\n \u201cMy ultimate goal is to introduce young audiences to jazz music, to classical music, to encourage them to learn instruments and explore their own sound,\u201d Laufey said.<\/p>\n In a recent interview, Laufey discussed her new album, embracing anger on the record, working with her twin sister and more. Responses are edited for clarity and brevity.<\/p>\n AP: What\u2019s the story behind the title \u201cA Matter of Time?\u201d<\/p>\n LAUFEY: I knew I wanted the album to have time as a central theme. I was just so fascinated by how it\u2019s kind of like this one thing that humans have no control over, and sometimes we want to speed up and sometimes we want to slow down, but ultimately it\u2019s out of our control. And there\u2019s something romantic about that to me.<\/p>\n Now its taken on a little bit of a different meaning in that it\u2019s basically me baring my soul to the world and baring my soul to a lover. And it\u2019s kind of like, \u201ca matter of time until you find out everything about me.\u201d<\/p>\n AP: The end of \u201cSabotage\u201d felt very jarring, which is unexpected. Are you embracing anger on this album?<\/p>\n LAUFEY: For sure. I think I was never allowed to embrace anger. I was a very good kid growing up. I was very polite and very quiet. I used this as a way to show that you can be angry, and rather, to show also that you can be both a soft, spoken person while still harboring anger.<\/p>\n I think the understanding of women and characters has so much been like one or the other. She\u2019s like this, she\u2019s a mad woman, she a soft, sweet woman. Like, we\u2019re all everything.<\/p>\n AP: How do you compare this album to your past projects?<\/p>\n This is just the most free I\u2019ve been. I wasn’t following any type of compass in that I wasn’t trying to create something as education. I was more so just making music from the heart. I just approached with a whole lot more confidence, even though the album\u2019s all about anxiety and learning about oneself and insecurity and delusion. And it\u2019s tapping into emotions that I maybe wouldn\u2019t have dared to tap into before. It is the most confident I\u2019ve been, because I don\u2019t think I\u2019d have the confidence to put out the music in this album before.<\/p>\n AP: Your twin sister Junia is credited on the album. What\u2019s it like working with her?<\/p>\n LAUFEY: It\u2019s so special. We do everything together. Like, she does everything, pretty much, \u2014 other than the music, the literal music making \u2014 she has her hands in.<\/p>\n All the merch, that\u2019s all her. The album covers, all the creative, like, music videos, everything \u2014 she\u2019s such a part of the project. And then she literally plays violin on some of the songs. I know so many artists who talk about how it can be quite lonely, but I\u2019ve never really been alone. Like, I\u2019ve always done it in tandem with my sister.<\/p>\n AP: You’ve spoken about the importance of Asian role models. I think you’ve become one<\/p>\n yourself.<\/p>\n LAUFEY: I grew up in a very, very different, like, homogenous Icelandic community. I didn\u2019t see people who looked like me every single day. I saw my mom, that was it. And I guess I saw my identical twin sister, who looked exactly like me. But it\u2019s so powerful, seeing someone who looks like you, that you can look up to.<\/p>\n I already see more representation, but there\u2019s still such a long way to go. I\u2019m still a half-white Asian woman, you know? And I don\u2019t want young Asian women to look up and see all of the stars in front of them be half-White either, because what kind of message is that sending? So, I don’t know. Anything I can do to lift up voices, create those communities, and empower young Asian artists to do their thing, that’s, like, at the center of my philosophy.<\/p>\n AP: You\u2019ve done all the things you said you wanted to do in your yearbook. What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n LAUFEY: I\u2019d love to score a film or do, like, a theme song to a film, preferably a James Bond theme song, because that\u2019s, like, my dream. But it\u2019s so hard to say because I\u2019ve ticked off all those simple things off \u2014 many are big, but the tick-able ones. I hope I\u2019m still making music and I still hope that I love it.<\/p>\n Karena Phan, The Associated Press<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Long before the Icelandic Chinese artist Laufey became recognized the world over for her neoclassical jazz-meets-pop music, she was a student, answering a familiar yearbook prompt: \u201cWhere do you see yourself in 10 years?\u201d Her answer: Move to the U.S., sign a record deal and win a Grammy. The 26-year-old has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1968748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[22219,331335],"class_list":["post-1968747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-classical-music","tag-laufey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Laufeys-A-Matter-of-Time-embraces-anger-jazz-pop-and.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1968747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1968748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1968747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1968747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1968747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}