Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The most-streamed Icelandic artist ever, with Björk trailing in her wake, is a Berklee-trained 26-year-old inspired by golden oldies and classic musicals. Laufey, pronounced Lay-vay, recounts Gen Z tales of romance amid a light swirl of bossa nova, cocktail jazz and orchestral pop.
Propelled by TikTok fame, she occupies a curious space between cutesy gimmickry and intriguingly driven stylism: the notion of being haunted often turns up in her songwriting. With each new record, the gimmicky aspect recedes. Her songs have gained more than 5bn streams, while a recent New York Times interview included pan-musical encomia from Olivia Rodrigo, Barbra Streisand and Gustavo Dudamel.
A Matter of Time is her third studio album in three years, an old-fashioned rate of return. Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir (her full name) claims it will reveal her “angrier” and “sexier” sides. “I wanted the world to know I’m not always so polite,” she insists. We drop the needle on opening track “Clockwork”, smelling salts at hand — only to find the kind of close harmony vocals and plush arrangements that made Patti Page the US’s biggest-selling female singer in the 1950s.
“Swore I’d never do this again,” Laufey sings, all but winking as she tells a tale of going on a first date with a friend. There are no changes in approach here, nor in “Lover Girl”, a jaunty bossa nova bagatelle about being love-struck. But “Snow White” introduces a shift in tone. Accompanied by introspectively strummed guitar, like Billie Eilish in one of her ukulele moments, Laufey whisper-sings about not measuring up to ideals of beauty. As an orchestra swells into focus, her vocals become unusually dramatic and Broadway-like, including the use of vibrato, Streisand’s signature technique.
An F-bomb is dropped in “Too Little, Too Late”, a Rodrigo-ish piano ballad sung from the point of view of a man who fails to follow the dictates of his heart. “Tough Luck” blends the thrumming pop-rock of Taylor Swift with twinkling choral harmonies and orchestral embellishments. The song takes aim at a cheating ex-partner, a downward twist on the breezy romantic scenarios of previous albums. (Aaron Dessner, who has worked with Swift, joins Laufey’s usual collaborator Spencer Stewart as the album’s co-producer.)
A chintzy strain of Disneyfication prevents A Matter of Time from achieving real emotional traction, as does the singer’s somewhat inexpressive belting. But the album is enjoyable and unusual, a bridge between the “pop girls” of today and their equivalents from decades past.
★★★★☆
‘A Matter of Time’ is released by AWAL