Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir, known more widely as Laufey, is a 26-year-old Chinese-Icelandic jazz singer. Laufey is best known for her album “Bewitched”, which won a musical Grammy award in 2024. Laufey has been a singer and songwriter for five years, composing many famous songs, an example of such is “From the Start”, with over 759 million streams.

Laufey had a tough upbringing as a child. She was one of the only Chinese people in the area in Iceland. As she grew older and fell in love with jazz music, she decided that’s what she wanted to do as she grew up, compose and sing jazz. The only major block in her path was having to deal with the perspective people have on the type of jazz she sang. The type of jazz Laufey typically sang was smooth, which made her music often perceived as ‘old’ by younger audiences. This proved to be a challenge for her, having to change people’s perspective on older and slower jazz and getting her music to go more mainstream. This issue was mostly resolved with Laufey being able to bridge this gap, attracting younger listeners, and also being able to challenge the traditional jazz attitudes.

Laufey’s music has had many different changes of phases, starting out with jazzy music, then slowly transitioning to more sorrowful music about breakups. An example is the song “Second best” which talks about the realization that, despite giving it your all, giving them your all, you still may never be their first choice, their priority, and still be stuck as their “Second best”. “I loved you so much that I settled for less. Oh, you were my everything, I was your second best.” Is a line from “Second best” that encapsulates the message Laufey was trying to give wonderfully. It shows how one could give up everything, even settle for something they know they don’t have to, just for the chance to be with someone not willing to give their all. Laufey’s more recent music has been a mixture of the more jazzy music and more sorrowful, with songs like “Lover Girl” and “Snow White”.

The Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album was given to Laufey for her album “Bewitched.” She also won the Icelandic Music Awards for Pop, Rock, Hip Hop, and Electronic Performer of the year, and the Icelandic Optimism Award, all in the year 2024.

Laufey may be an emerging artist, but her impact on jazz music is already noticeable. From when earlier in her career she would only make occasional appearances at jazz festivals, attracting around 300 attendees, to having crowds as big as 17,000 at the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. Her career as a singer is just starting, with another string of big performances expected soon as she drops her newest album, “A Matter of Time”. Laufey’s debut single, “Street by Street”, also reached number one on Icelandic radios in 2020, with it only being out for less than a year, which really shows her growing influence on jazz listeners.