Singer Laufey on Asian Identity and Representation in Music

Laufey has at all times felt “undefined.” Whether it was her distinctive, trendy jazz sound or her id as a Chinese Icelandic artist, the 24-year-old singer-songwriter and producer tells POPSUGAR she “always felt like an anomaly and a bit of an outsider in my communities.”

The artist, who just lately took residence her first Grammy for greatest conventional pop vocal album, has taken the music world — and TikTok — by storm. Since going viral on the platform in early 2022, she’s launched two albums, the second of which earned her the accolade. “Being a bit different became my status quo. I took my experience of being undefined into the music industry,” she says.

Laufey’s background rising up with Chinese and Icelandic mother and father in Iceland and later residing in the US was pivotal to constructing her sound and, finally, her profession in music. “I had such a mix of experiences learning music,” she says. Her first foray into music was related to her Chinese tradition — by her mom, a world-class violinist, and her maternal grandfather, who taught the instrument.

Laufey took piano classes at Beijing’s prestigious Central Conservatory of Music, and she carried out as a solo cellist for the Iceland Symphony Orchestra at 15. When she began attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, she realized jazz and pop for the primary time. “All of those experiences allowed me to grow up hearing the different sounds of each of my cultures and taught me about the things that bind different musical disciplines together and what sets them apart,” she explains. Her mix of jazz, classical, and pop is so distinctive that there is usually debate over defining her precise style of music.

In addition to influencing her music, her faculty expertise allowed her to embrace extra of her Asian heritage, which she says she wasn’t uncovered to rising up in Iceland. “Living in the US has given me exposure to bigger Asian communities that I didn’t necessarily have growing up in Iceland, where my mother and a few of her friends were the extent of my Asian community,” she says. “Outside of the music industry, I’ve been able to embrace my identity as an Asian and be more proud of that side of me.” In flip, that shift has given her the chance to “connect on a deeper level” along with her followers of Asian descent.

And now, as a younger lady in the music business, Laufey is keen about opening up alternatives for different girls artists, significantly these of coloration. She can depend the variety of girls producers she’s labored with on one hand. Through Bose’s Turn the Dial initiative, which goals to shut the gender hole in music manufacturing, the musician collaborated with Eunike Tanzil, a rising producer and composer, to create a tune from scratch in simply three hours. “Eunike has such a beautiful way of approaching a simple melody, which is what drew me to her in the beginning,” Laufey says. “It’s an honor to create music with other Asian women in the industry. Together, we bring to our music a type of sincerity that is unique to our backgrounds.”

As she continues to climb the charts, Laufey understands her undefined style and id signify what mainstream music and media have been lacking. For Laufey, her current Grammy win was “for those who couldn’t figure out who they wanted to be.”

As she places it: “It was a stamp of approval proving that you don’t have to follow a certain path in order to succeed in music.”