Laufey on making jazz cool again (and the fish that brought out her inner rage)

Key developments are emerging from the global stage. Laufey on making jazz cool again (and the fish that brought out her inner rage) Just now Share Save Add as preferred on Google Mark Savage Music Correspondent Laufey/Vingolf/Awal Laufey's modern spin on jazz has twice earned her the Grammy Award for best traditional pop album It's probably fair to say that most of us have never slapped someone so hard with a wet fish that they fall, fully clothed, into a swimming pool. Until recently, that was also true for Icelandic jazz-pop phenomenon Laufey. Then she released a song called Mad Woman, whose video required her to hit Heated Rivalry actor Hudson Williams square in the face with a red snapper.

"Oh my God, it was amazing. It was cathartic," she laughs at the memory. "I had a lot of unreleased energy that I released on poor Hudson.

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" The shoot took place in Los Angeles, with a chic 1960s aesthetic, a superstar cast (including Olympic medallist Alyssa Liu and Katseye singer Megan Skiendiel), and a storyline about Laufey's irrational relationship with a man who's no good for her. To her delight, the fish scene required several takes, full of improvised insults. "I'm not a very angry person but it felt good to scream and shout," she says.

"I dug into my deepest memories of when I've been the most wronged by men and I accessed a part of myself I didn't know I had in me. "It felt very primal. " For anyone familiar with the music of Laufey (pronounced lay- vay) Jónsdóttir, primal is the last word you'd associate with her.

Laufey/Vingolf/Awal The red snapper (a prop, not a real fish) prompted much hilarity on set with Heated Rivalry's Hudson Williams Since 2022, she's cast a spell on the charts with swoonsome love songs that mix classic jazz vocals and luscious orchestrations with witty, confessional lyrics. It's a style she dreamt up while studying at Boston's Berklee College of Music, built on her upbringing in Reykjavik, where she learned piano and cello from the age of four; and a desire to combine her love of movie musicals and Taylor Swift. When she uploaded her first song, Street by Street - about reclaiming her favourite gardens and bookstores after a breakup - she was stumped when the submission form asked her to list it under a single genre.

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In the end, she chose "singer-songwriter". But the question of where Laufey sits in the pantheon of popular music has befuddled critics ever since. Ask her, and she says it doesn't really matter.

"Older audiences are always trying to figure me out," she says. "Like, 'Is she a jazz musician? Is she a pop musician?

' "And I find with my younger audience, they don't have this predetermined bias for what they're meant to enjoy. They listen to what their heart wants to listen to. "I feel so lucky to be a musician nowadays, because genre has never meant less.

The development has drawn wide international attention, with diplomatic circles watching closely.