Three-quarters of the way through the annus horribilis that has been 2025, as many of us have to strain our minds for the tiniest hint of optimism, a 26-year-old Chinese-Icelandic music prodigy, Laufey, has been packing arenas across North America. Including two sold-out dates at New York’s Madison Square Garden and another pair of sold-out dates in Toronto, all within one week.
It’s the latest in what has been an astonishing ascent for Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir, who in 2020 was just another young person on TikTok during the lockdown, seeking to connect with others. Five years later, she’s in a sparkly Margot Fonteyn-inspired Bode dress, skipping along to a bossa nova tune in front of thousands of adoring fans who sing along to every word. The best part is that she did it on her own terms.
Barely a year removed from her much-ballyhooed multi-show appearance at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Laufey was back in a venue five times the size, packed with a diverse collection of humanity. Most of the young girls in the audience sported homemade felt crowns and were clad in costumes that matched Laufey’s sparkly aesthetic, while groups of queer youngsters giddily bought merch by the bagful. Peppered throughout the crowd were not just parents of costumed kids, but boomer jazz aficionados, curious Gen-Xers like myself, and clusters of the young “performative males” that Laufey loves to poke fun at.
On more than one occasion, I’ve attempted to describe Laufey to the uninitiated and explain why she’s so popular. “Picture an artist drawing inspiration from the Great American Songbook like Lana Del Rey does, only instead of singing about the death of the myth of the American dream, she’s a band/theater kid who’s into Broadway, Snoopy, matcha, and bunnies.” She didn’t just attend the esteemed Berklee School of Music; she graduated, contrary to the running joke that most famous Berklee alums drop out before completing their studies.
She plays cello, guitar, and piano. Her resonant voice is a blend of Ella Fitzgerald and Diana Krall, and her compositions draw from the influences of Tin Pan Alley, George Gershwin, Chet Baker, and Norah Jones. To label her as a jazz interloper or worse, “Starbucks music”, does her a disservice; her deep love of mid-20th-century pop and jazz vocals is palpable in every song she sings.
Laufey’s first swing for the mainstream fences, A Matter of Time is a Technicolor fever dream that embraces the past, present, and future of popular music, expanding her sound well beyond the jazz-folk of 2023’s Bewitched and showcasing her versatility and range as a songwriter, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, and singer.
The stage design for her 2025 tour, brought to life by London architects Stufish, gracefully reflects the ambition of the record. The main stage represents a palatial ballroom, while a sleek catwalk (inspired by the scroll of stringed instruments) connects to a smaller second stage shaped like a clock, its numbers illuminating one by one during a four-act show to reflect the passage of time. Orchestra risers flanking the main stage house Laufey’s eight-piece backing band, while two curved staircases move to create specific effects, such as a carousel for (you guessed it) “Carousel”, and a stormy Nordic cliffside for the epic “Forget-Ne-Not”.
Accompanied by four dancers, Laufey kicked off the show in full Doris Day mode on the utterly charming “Clockwork”. As someone more accustomed to the huge pop of a superstar’s grand entrance, it was disarming to hear the adoring screams quickly die down, allowing the gentle swing of the music to take over. It was a magical little moment, though the young crowd gave their idol license to take them on a languid musical journey. They were there to listen. No one was screaming lyrics with liturgical fervour; instead, kids dreamily sang along to their favorite numbers and gleefully provided joyous (and surprisingly on-point) claps to punctuate Laufey’s latest twinkly bossa nova revival, “Lover Girl”.
Later on, “Silver Lining” pulled out all the 1950s pop stops, reminiscent of the starry-eyed ballads of Connie Francis, its gloriously melodramatic chorus becoming a gigantic sing-along. With Laufey on grand piano, the sumptuous “Too Little, Too Late” hints at Carole King. Still, her strong, mid-range timbre actually bears an uncanny similarity to the powerful chest voice of the underrated Ronee Blakley, adding an extra touch of anguish to an already heartbreaking tune.
The smaller second stage became a showcase for Laufey’s “jazz club” second act. Clad in an embroidered miniskirt with copious, flapper-style beaded fringe, she and her jazz trio launched into a cover of 1940s standard “Seems Like Old Times” (famously covered by her hero, Ella), followed by jazz interpretations of early songs “Valentine”, “Fragile”, and “While You Were Sleeping”.
Back on the main stage, “Carousel” and “Forget-Me-Not” were spectacles in themselves thanks to that understated yet dazzling stage design, which then segued into the surprising inclusion of A Matter of Time’s musical interlude, “Cuckoo Ballet”. A cute medley of the first six tracks on the album (another charming nod to mid-century musical theater), it was an opportunity for Laufey to strut her stuff further, this time performing a cello solo.
The Golden Age of Hollywood was a prominent theme of the show’s giddy fourth act, which focused primarily on A Matter of Time, more contemporary-leaning material. “Mister Eclectic” is a humorous, witty takedown of performative males that translates well to a live setting. “Castle in Hollywood” and “Tough Luck” flirt with modern pop tropes without compromising Laufey’s retrofuturist persona. The brutal, confessional “Snow White” served as a fitting emotional climax to the main set. Laufey’s lyrics about her own body dysmorphia are echoed gracefully by her dancers, choreographing full-body mirrors that stalk the singer during the performance.
Her beguiling breakthrough single from 2023, “From the Start”, is showing no sign of slowing down, and to no one’s surprise, it received a euphoric reaction from the audience, who were swept away by Laufey’s little scat solo as she danced across the sparkly stage. However, it was A Matter of Time‘s closing track, “Sabotage”, that left a bigger impression.
It wasn’t so much the brilliant execution of the song’s dissonant jump scare, but rather that the jump scare (and the song’s blustery outro) echoes the more abrasive moments of the late Scott Walker, hinting that there’s more to Laufey than self-referential mellow bossa nova tracks and cute bunny mascots. After all, glitter shines brighter when juxtaposed with darkness, and the way “Sabotage” built to its cacophonous crescendo was thrilling to witness in person.
Laufey’s final song was her poignant “Letter to My 13-Year-Old Self”, which includes the line, “I’m so sorry that they pick you last / Try to say your foreign name and laugh.” As soon as she sang it, shouts of “Laufey!” echoed from the darkness, her expression of vulnerability met with a chorus of affirmation that was, frankly, quite moving.
Laufey is a prodigious talent, but also immensely relatable: she’s a nerd, and everyone was at the show because, well, we’re all nerds too. Forty years ago, I was a band geek in junior high and didn’t fit in either. I’m not wild about matcha, but I’ve grown to love musical theater. Snoopy is awesome. Mei-Mei the bunny is indeed super cute. I’ve been humming those bossa nova tunes all year long. I turn 55 tomorrow, and I can’t wait to see what Laufey does next.
