Laufey’s Sound of Love

Entering the world of romance + jazz standards

Words: Aimee Phillips / Photos: Zac Mahrouche

Love has to be one of life’s greatest mysteries. It is both scorchingly hot and achingly cold; sometimes unrequited, sometimes returned. Love either evades or envelopes us again and again. Love ultimately leaves far more questions than it ever gives us answers. It’s no wonder, then, that so many of the world’s greatest songs are about love. Our longing for it, our loss of it.

Yet nowhere is the topic of love held so tenderly as in jazz. Often regarded as a soundtrack to love, the way that vocals and melodies intertwine can feel like the sonic representation of the emotions we feel. From the heart swell of the strings to the hopeful meandering of the piano and the longing and lamenting of the saxophone, the romantic power the genre holds is undeniable.

“It’s one of those things that you can write endlessly about. There’s no final answer to anything and everyone experiences love so differently”, Laufey ponders. “We’re all so interested in hearing other people’s perspectives on love whilst trying to make our own conclusion. But really, there is no conclusion. So there’s just a lot of conversation around it. It’s such a mystifying feeling. I think as humans, we always want to figure everything out, get some sort of answer, and there’s just no answer to anything when it comes to love”.

Laufey’s love affair with jazz has been a lifelong one. Growing up, the sounds of Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra would fill the house on her parents’ stereo. Enamoured with the string arrangements she heard in her favourite jazz standards, Laufey trained as a cellist and classical musician, eventually releasing her own original works.

Laufey has made a name for herself by adding a modern pop twist to her jazz sound, crafting wistful, charming and dreamily romantic songs that captured the hearts of fans around the world. A singer-songwriter, composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist, she released her debut EP Typical of Me in 2021, before releasing her debut album Everything I Know About Love in 2022.

The LA-based Icelandic-Chinese jazz artist has become a key voice in the contemporary jazz scene in recent years. Yet no matter how much she writes and sings about love, Laufey has found that she too, is no closer to uncovering the answers that we all seek. In fact, she originally contemplated naming her debut album ‘Questions for the Universe’ (Laufey fans will know this track ended up on the deluxe version of the album) instead of the resulting title.

“Most of these songs are me asking the universe questions”, Laufey explains. “This album marked the transition from childhood to adulthood for me. When you grow up, you stop asking your parents these questions, because you realise they don’t really have all the answers in life. I struggled with knowing where to direct these questions, so I had all these questions for the universe”.

“I just thought [Everything I Know About Love] perfectly encapsulated the theme of the album. Because it’s really a list of everything I know about love, which is just not very much. But all these songs are everything I know about love so far”.

It’s this quest for answers that keeps Laufey constantly inspired. “I write very much about whatever moves me in the moment, and I always find that it’s some sort of overwhelming love or hurt over love”, Laufey reveals. “I think that’s just a very prevalent emotion always, but especially in these tumultuous early 20s - those years where you’re trying to figure stuff out”.

So why exactly do we connect jazz with great romance? “A lot of jazz music was written in the 30s and the 40s. The vocabulary was a little bit different,” Laufey begins. “I think to the modern ear, it sounds very timeless, very old school, very nostalgic, very romantic, and something almost a little bit other worldly or from a different life. So it seems more tender; softer somehow. I think that has to do with a lot of the lyrics. Sonically, it’s this sound that we connect to a lot of old movies”.

One of the greatest questions surrounding love - and one that is endlessly debated - is what love sounds like. For some, it is the comforting hum of familiarity; the sleep-filled sighs of the lover each night or the purr of a loyal pet curled by your side. It could be anything from grand love ballads to the hum of a car pulling into the driveway. For Laufey, “Love sounds like tension and release to me. A lot of swelling strings but also the technical definition of a chord, the tension in a chord. You’ll have a chord that has lots of notes in it and lots of tensions in it. And then you move one note, and it just releases. That’s how love feels to me, because it will be tense, it will have a lot of dissonance in it, some sort of difficulty and then it will let go and it’s the nicest release”.

There’s one jazz musician in particular who has captured Laufey’s heart: Chet Baker. The American jazz trumpeter and vocalist, nicknamed “The Prince of Cool” is top of Laufey’s list when asked about her favourite jazz standards. “I love ‘Everything Happens to Me’. There’s a fantastic rendition by Chet Baker. It’s [originally] by Tom Adair and Matt Dennis. I think the lyrics are so beautiful, and it’s such a pretty way of putting love. It’s like he’s listing all these things that have happened that are unlucky to him, and the unluckiest is that I’ve fallen in love with you”, she says.

Laufey is such a fan of Chet Baker, in fact, that she dedicated a song to him. On the almost Disney-esque ‘Just Like Chet’, Laufey sings: “Unfortunately I don’t know anything ‘bout love and its foolish tendencies / And just like Chet, I tend to fall in love too easily”.

What does love feel like for Laufey? “Love feels... I don’t know. Recently, it feels a little humiliating, I find. Not in the most standard definition of humiliating, just in the way that to love someone is to be able to allow yourself to be completely vulnerable. That’s what you give up when you start falling in love or have so much love for someone, you allow yourself to be completely yourself and it’s a little bit humiliating”, Laufey muses.

Laufey’s sentiment brings a quote by Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu to mind: “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage”.

“I think love is scary”, Laufey responds. “I think it’s the best thing and the worst thing in the world. It drives you a little bit mad. Out of all things in life, love has the ability to sway you around the most; sway your emotions. Love is what can both make you happiest and saddest”.

As an acclaimed jazz musician and hopeless romantic, what has Laufey learned about love so far? “That it’s unexpected”, she mulls, a smile in her voice. “Scary but beautiful”.