Laufey’s ‘Everything I Know About Love’: a Slow-Dance Between Jazz and Pop

Icelandic jazz musician Laufey Lín Jónsdóttir (otherwise known as Laufey) revives the romanticism of cool jazz in her debut album ‘Everything I Know About Love’ (released on August 26 2022). Filled with swooning string arrangements, detailed storytelling, and emotional vulnerability, this album plays out like a fairytale of the 21^st Century; audibly beautiful in its sound and lyricism, whilst maintaining relatability to a modern listener.

The titular track, ‘Everything I Know About Love’, epitomizes this marriage between the old and new in Laufey’s work. It is the track most aligned with the sound of modern, indie-pop, with its staccato beat and electric guitar riff at the end of the song. Despite sounding more processed than the other, softer singles of the album, it maintains the lyrical honesty that runs throughout each track, and summarises the concept of the album; an imperfect account of the experience of love. Laufey explores this idea from many angles; a fleeting crush on the London Underground, lingering memories of a past romance, the love we attribute to our childhood home, and the insecurities of feeling inexperienced in love. In this way, the album is a scrapbook of affection and heartbreak, romanticism and realism, all tied together through the sound of Laufey’s hearty vocals, reminiscent of her idols, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Chet Baker.

Laufey’s admiration for these musicians shines through in this album. We find it not only in their influence on her sound, but also through her explicit, lyrical references to them. ‘Just Like Chet’, one of the slower, more poignant tracks on the album, is an ode to Baker’s well-known, ‘I Fall in Love Too Easily’. It is tinged with the delicate vulnerability that characterises the lyrics of this jazz standard, and is haunted with soft trumpeting in the instrumentals, a clear allusion to Baker’s history as a trumpeter. We also hear her take on the Guys and Dolls classic, ‘I’ve Never Been in Love Before’, a cover that features on ‘Chet Baker Sings’, continuing to demonstrate Laufey’s dedication to communicating with musicians of the past.

Her devotion to jazz tradition is offset by the freshness of her lyrics, which maintain a balance between witty relatability and poetic instinct. We go from the “soft candle glow” of ‘Fragile’, to an “innocent crush on the morning commute” in ‘Beautiful Stranger’. We hear Laufey’s call for relationship advice in ‘Valentine’ — “I tell him that he’s pretty too/Can I say that? Don’t have a clue” — followed by the vivid “flakes of crystal white snow” painted for us in ‘Above the Chinese Restaurant’. Perhaps it is Laufey’s lyrical variety that makes the album feel so much like a storybook; we are taken on a journey through anecdotes of love, pain, and humour, brought to life through the enchanting imagery of her lyrics.

A good example of this is the final track of the album, ‘Night Light’. Laufey draws us into a tour of her childhood bedroom, pointing out various knickknacks and memories held inside this “treasure-chest” of everything she’s ever known. The contrast she creates between the warm nostalgia of her childhood and the bittersweetness of leaving it behind holds a masterful sense of poetry. This is only heightened by the airy harmonies and cinematic build-up of strings in the chorus, ending the album with a potent, atmospheric finish.

The only track that seems to be incompatible with the evocative lyricism of the rest of the album is ‘Dance With You Tonight’. It is a simple song about refusing a dance partner after a long night out. Despite being catchy with its cheerful piano melody and scorning tone (“Silly boy, don’t talk to me!”), it lacks the vulnerability and instrumental texture of her other tracks. The lyrics feel insincere, rooted in an old-fashioned aesthetic, rather than the emotional honesty that makes Laufey’s music so relatable. Nevertheless, the track offers a lighthearted break from the expressive storytelling of the rest of the album and is another reiteration of Laufey’s lyrical variety.

‘Everything I Know About Love’ achieves a sense of timelessness, in its balance between its influences from jazz history, and Laufey’s ability to reconstruct these styles into her own, unique genre of music. It is unlike the mainstream pop-music that dominates today’s media, and yet it does not feel out of place in a modern setting. It will be interesting to see Laufey continue her reanimation of jazz tradition, and watch as she produces more, most likely impressive, pieces of work as a rising artist.