Click the red listen button to hear the full conversation with WBEZ’s Reset and Laufey.

Laufey is many things – a jazz icon to some, a breakout pop star to others. But as she writes in the song “Goddess,” she’s also just a normal girl.

That’s a little hard to believe, since the Icelandic-Chinese singer has had an impressive year. After winning a Grammy for her 2023 album Bewitched in February, the newly turned 25-year-old has been busy with her Bewitched: The Goddess Tour that kicked off this month.

Laufey (pronounced “lay-vay”) made her debut with 2020’s Typical of Me, and her popularity skyrocketed two years later with the album Everything I Know About Love. Trained on the cello, she combines classical with jazz, and the traditional with the new, to create tender songs about young romance, heartbreak and insecurity. Her music has resonated with fans of all ages, making her a viral sensation on TikTok, where the artist lovingly connects with her fanbase.

In town for a sold-out Chicago stop on her tour, Laufey dropped by WBEZ’s Reset this week for an interview and a quick live performance of her new single “Bored.” If you missed her this time, she’ll be back in Chicago for Lollapalooza in August for a performance with The Chicago Philharmonic. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Sasha-Ann Simons: I think it’s important to talk about your efforts to introduce jazz and classical music to audiences who aren’t familiar. Why is that a mission of yours?

Laufey: My mother’s a violinist, so I grew up playing cello and piano and then I started singing jazz when I was 12 or 13. We always had jazz playing in the house. I just became obsessed with Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday and these jazz icons with these deeper voices.

As I grew older and started making my own music, it was just always natural to me to continue making that kind of music. I realized that a lot of my peers around me just didn’t know it … And also it hadn’t been presented to them as something that was their own. It became my mission to keep the genres alive in a way [in] my own music, and hopefully becoming like a gateway for people to go listen to Ella Fitzgerald or go listen to Chopin or something.

You have received a lot of love for your music. What do you think then that says about the kinds of music that young people do enjoy these days? What do you think it is about this time that we’re living in that makes that work?

I think new audiences alike, whether it be Gen Z, or even Gen A, audiences are incredibly versatile. There’s just so much exposure to different genres of music and different eras of film and TV. There’s this openness towards new music on TikTok. Even on social media, these songs from the 90s, 80s, 70s, down to like the 40s, fly up the charts just because they’re having little viral moments. It’s incredibly exciting. You’re no longer boxed into genres.

Even when I run into audiences on the street – they’re oftentimes on the younger side. It just says so much about music – that anybody can listen to it. It’s just so cool because all I see is just a group of people that I would have loved to be friends with – and am friends with in a way.

You attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston during the pandemic. What impact did that time of isolation have on your ability to be creative?

I remember we were thrown off campus, and I came back to my bedroom at home with my parents. I just said to myself, I’m going to try and post videos of myself singing jazz standards on the internet, write as much as possible and post little videos of that – almost like a practice for myself.

One of the videos I did was a cover of “It Could Happen To You,” and it went viral on Instagram.

What was that moment like going viral? You’re huge on TikTok and social media, and it’s played such a role in your journey.

It was crazy because I remember I had, like, 1,000 followers. I gained 10,000 followers within a week. Back then, it felt like I had made it. [Social media] played a huge role. It was the only way I had of exposing my music to the public during the pandemic. I couldn’t play live anywhere. I figured out how to grow an audience there, and it became my community. I’d write a song, I’d open up a live stream, and I’d get feedback from the audiences. I’d decide which songs to continue, and it just snowballed from there.

That’s why I feel so passionate about my audience. It really feels like something we’ve built together and I owe everything to them. There was no precedent for a young woman to make jazz-inspired music. I don’t think anybody felt four or five years ago would have been like, “Oh, yeah, that’s gonna be successful.” So I feel very lucky.

You’ve called “Goddess” your most honest song yet. You write a lot about love and heartbreak. But how was writing this one different?

It came from this moment where I felt this really stark difference between this person that I am on stage and online. You feel like this goddess on a podium: You have lots of people watching you, you have lots of makeup on, and wear these big beautiful dresses. Whereas at home, I’m just this same woman and girl that I’ve always been. So “Goddess” was born out of this extreme difference between those two feelings that I can have, even within one night after stepping off a stage. And I use this story of a relationship as a device to describe that. I think this is something that speaks to a lot of us now as we present ourselves a certain way online and find ourselves to be quite normal at home.

The Bewitched album was recorded with all live instruments. Why?

For me, the most successful songs are the ones that are the most authentic to me, which is a really, really lucky chain of events. After Everything I Know About Love, I found that the songs that were performing the best were the songs that either most closely resembled jazz standards, or were the ones that were recorded live with a symphony orchestra. I also felt this higher level of confidence. I’d grown a bigger audience that were just willing to listen to what I put out, not just for the song, but for my vision and musicality.

With Bewitched, I [wanted to] see how far we can challenge ourselves to create these effects and sounds without the help of a computer. Of course, we have a computer recording it, [but] instead of using a Celeste [digital] sound on a virtual instrument, let’s go track down a toy piano somewhere in some garage and record it so the album feels timeless. Let’s record it the way that it would have been recorded back in the day. A lot of the songs are recorded on vintage microphones.

It’s been several months or so since you released your second album, and a couple of days since releasing adeluxe version. Is there anything new that Laufey wants to try with her next set of records? Like could we see you dabbling in different genres, kind of Beyoncé style?

Oh my God. I mean, I want to do a country album at some point. 100%. Like, an old kind of bluesy country album? Absolutely. I’m open to anything. I definitely feel quite adamant on my mission of introducing jazz and classical, like, that’s still my life blood, so we’ll see. I’m not closing anything out. I just love all kinds of music and I feel like I’ve gotten to the point where my audience trusts me and I can make the music I want.

Let’s talk more about your inspirations. Who is in your musical rotation these days?

A lot of Taylor Swift. I’ve been listening to Chappell Roan – just really, really fun. I always listened to a lot of Norah Jones, a lot of classical music on the road, just because it’s calming.

You’re coming back to Chicago this summer for Lollapalooza and you’re going to be playing with the Chicago Philharmonic. What do you enjoy when you are performing with them versus the times when you’re solo?

I think for me, again, it’s just this very direct goal of keeping the orchestra sound alive and something that feels like it’s for young people and for a festival stage. I think it’s the funniest thing in the world. Either you will leave there loving it, hopefully, or you will absolutely hate it. But, you will remember it, and that’s what I care about.

Sasha-Ann Simons is the host of Reset. Follow her at @SashaAnnSimons. Micah Yason is a producer for WBEZ’s Reset. Ethan Schwabe is Reset’s audio engineer. Mendy Kong is a digital producer at WBEZ. Follow them @ngogejat.