Isaac Dunbar Takes Our Pop Quiz
office gave Isaac an impromptu pop quiz where there are no wrong answers... except, of course, the wrong ones.
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office gave Isaac an impromptu pop quiz where there are no wrong answers... except, of course, the wrong ones.
"Nature's Voice is a Cry" and its corresponding video are our entry way into Kai’s freakpop world that we will be fully immersed in when the rest of the project comes out. “I tend to think of myself as having many different personalities that don’t get along,” he explains. “Freak Pop is my self defined world that I created for myself and those personalities to live in. The people that search the nooks and crannies for safety pins and cigarette butts. The people that grew up with very little knowledge on what’s cool and what isn’t.”
Calling from his home studio in Kingston, NY, where he creates the majority of his music, Kai tells us about his hippie upbringing, his creative process, and the paths that have led him to this release. The single echoes the cries of mother earth in a three and a half minute meandering track, replete with drum machines and nostalgic guitar licks. Kai gently tosses us into the imagery of his youth:
“Walk down lover’s lane
Nothing but this gravel road
Nice night for an escapade
Promise me you’ll take it slow”
He creates this environment that to him is so personal, while also singing about a fond farewell to California, as he grows roots in the East and watches the West burn.
Take a trip with us through our exclusive interview with Emmett Kai below.
What brought you to the Hudson Valley?
I'm from, like, a super small town and every town around me, super small, and there's not a lot of action, and there's not a lot of quote, unquote “cool” stuff going on. I just met the right person at the right time who took me to New York to visit. I felt super compelled to uproot my entire life. I had nothing to lose and I was like, I got a couple grand in cash, you know, and I'm like, I'll find an apartment on Facebook and just move my entire life. And so yeah, I've kind of been here ever since. I did try to go back to California during the pandemic, like in 2020. Early, early pandemic. But then we got burned out by the fires. I just was like, literally Google searched: “Where's the safest place to live in America when it comes to natural disasters?”. And the Hudson Valley was number one on the list. I was like, Dude, what are the, you know, what are the odds? I can see my friends in Brooklyn if I want and be close to all those people, but then also have my little country life and, you know, not be bothered.
I love it there so much. Do you consider yourself a small town type of person?
For sure. I think that I thrived in ways I didn't know were possible in the city. I just didn't know what to expect when I lived there. I remember one person told me, Just give it two months, just give it two months and then you'll know for sure if you wanna stay or if you wanna leave. But I know hella fools that showed up in New York and then, like, three weeks later, moved back home, you know? And it's like, that sucks. I don't wanna be that person. So I ended up staying for three years. and it was cool, but I always knew in the back of my mind, I'm not gonna be here forever. This isn't really my vibe. My morals don't really align with city life. No shade to, you know, like I'm not throwing shade at any of my friends or anybody that lives in the city, but just like personally, I don't really vibe with the city like that. It's too much consumption, too much fast fashion. Everything's so fast, which means that things just get drowned out. There's not a lot of mindfulness when it comes to consuming things and creating things and the longevity of things. I felt this sense of urgency all the time in New York.
It’s intense.
Yeah. It was like everything that I ever did was like, it needed to be done yesterday. It was like this sense of this importance to be seen, too. I felt like everybody's looking at you, but they're not at the same time. I think when I was there, I was younger, and where I was at that point, I was just kind of like, I want to be known, and I wanna make a mark, and I wanna make an impact. And I quickly realized that everything that I have to do in the city to do that is very unattractive to me.
I feel you. And you no longer feel that way at all? Or has it just changed?
One thing that I toy with a lot is, I want to be known for my art, you know, and that's really what it comes down to, is that if I devoted my life to my art, and that's the only thing that I care about aside from my family, that's what I put most of my energy into. That's when I wake up and go to sleep, you know, I get up every morning for that—living in the city took away from that so much. I've found being isolated way more productive. Especially struggling with mental health and addiction and stuff like that. I think that living in the city was really numbing for that kind of stuff. I don't think that it was conducive to a healthy lifestyle for me. Especially trying to be sober and trying to be super level headed and make smart decisions and stuff like that. I did make smart decisions, but it just made it so much harder, and here it's like, you know, my lifestyle now is so much more focused, so much less distraction, so much more room for me to think.
But I'll tell you, it took me a good year of living here to feel actually grounded for once, and be like, I actually feel like I'm in a good place. I know who I am. Identity crisis too. I'm sure that all artists kind of struggle with identity crises. In the city, it was really apparent to me. I was just struggling, constantly. Everybody thinks they're so cool here. I mean, it's like that in a lot of cities, like in any kind of like metropolitan big city where there are artists. Where people flock to perform and there's clicks and there's scenes. I always felt like everybody thinks they're so cool here. And like, I don't necessarily think any of it's cool. I can't tell what's cool. I need to zoom out and step back to understand what I actually think is cool. ‘Cause it's all just too much. I don't know if that may makes sense or not.
No, it definitely makes sense. I'm gonna go backwards a little bit with my next question. How do you think kind of having the east coast, New York, and then growing up in California, has influenced your sound and your art?
I think that growing up in California, I had a very limited, well, it has nothing to do with California, but it has more so to do with where and how I grew up. The way that I grew up, in the area that I grew up in California, is very like, it's known for being kind of like “back to the earth” or like the “hippie rebel” kind of Cowboys, whatever, you know what I mean? It’s super rural and I never had internet growing up. So I never was exposed to like, you know, like MySpace, like—
—Pop Culture.
Yeah. Dude, like pop culture was never really in my life. It was always coming to me later when it wasn't cool, you know, or whatever it was. If you went to the skate park, you would run into somebody who was older, who was listening to something that was cool. Or maybe they were the rich kids that had lived in town and they had internet.They were downloading all this music off LimeWire, you know? And you would come up on music that way. So the only thing that I really had going on was my mom. My mom played Cocteau Twins in the house when I was growing up, my mom played Smashing Pumpkins and the Smiths. She was a huge fan of all those kinds of like eighties, nineties shoey indie rock.
That’s my shit.
Yeah, that's my shit, too. That's what I grew up on. I was born in ’92, so I missed a lot of that stuff as a super lucid adult. It always struck a chord for me. So I took that stuff, and I ran with it, and I loved that stuff, and I played in bands. The best thing that happened to me was I got expelled from my school when I was in middle school. I got forced to go live with my dad in my freshman year of high school. I went to this town called Santa Rosa, which was like a small city. I went from a school with, like, 500 kids to 2000 kids. All of a sudden, I lived in a town with diversity and streets and, you know, cigarette discount stores and, you know what I mean? And weed stores or whatever, you know, like skate shops and all these cool little nooks and crannies, just so much more stuff.
And I think through that, I found a bunch of pockets of hardcore music and punk and then, and hip hop and rap. I just thought everything was so cool. So forever, I just was indulging in all of this stuff, playing in punk bands and playing drums and then singing and then also hanging out with some kids that rapped and would learn how to make beats and all that kind of stuff. Then I got into electronic music and was DJing and taking drugs and partying and staying out till six in the morning. When I was really young, I was raving a lot.
If you fast forward through all those years, when I moved to New York, I think that I got a little more dialed in on what my sound was, ‘cause I had already gone through a bunch of stuff that was kind of just shedding all the dead skin. By the time I got to New York City and was between New York City and Brooklyn, that was the beginning of me dialing in what I’m doing. I still make rap music. I still make electronic music. My artist project is very rock based, band based, or indie, you know? And so it's like, I still have all of these things. It's just learning how to compartmentalize all of them. It was really the whole objective.
Right. So that brings us to now. Your new single, "Nature's Voice is a Cry": Where did that title come from? Could you tell me a little bit about the origin of that song?
The title is definitely a bit like climate changey. Here's the thing. At the end of 2020, we drove to New York from California. We left because the fires were just so outta control.
I remember.
Yeah. I mean, it's almost every year now, but, the fires were so outta control. This was the third time that I had dealt with the fires. I also had my partner with me, and I was like, This is so whack. I don't want you to have to go through this ever again. I want to try to build a healthy life and a healthy home base, you know? So, we left, and we came here to New York again. We got here in December and then in June I went back for my friend's 31st birthday.
I flew back to California and I had this new panic disorder that had just hit me. I just started going to therapy again. I was struggling a lot, as I think a lot of people were after the pandemic. The vaccine had just been rolled out. So I went back to California in 2021. I was driving through my hometown and everything was burned, bro. Everything was black and crazy. Charred and weird and eerie. And my buddy was like, Wasn't that drive beautiful? And I was like, Dude, not really. Like, it's actually pretty depressing. It was not what I remember as a child. So I’ve been writing about that.
For the last year, I’ve been capturing that element of me kissing California goodbye and being kind of like, Farewell. I will always identify with you and love you as a state and as a culture. And just as bringing me up as a human being, but I've gotta move on. And so when I wrote this song, it was this homage to California and, not only just California. "Nature’s Voice is a Cry" is kind of this cry out for help.
Can you speak to a particular lyric that you feel illustrates that the most?
Writing lyrics for me is super avant garde and secondary. I mean I can answer the question. Yeah. But writing lyrics for me is usually secondary. I try to write the music first. And then I come up with melodies that hit the vibe, and I'm not really saying that I'm I have synesthesia—I don't really know if I do or not—but the way that I've always put it is, I try to capture just an overall feeling. And vibe. I'll make a hundred versions of it and then I'll know which one's the right one.
The first thing I wrote down when I was listening to your song was the word "nostalgia," and I feel like that was part of what you were going for. You're thinking about growing up in California and how things used to be greener. You were a child, but—
Used to be more wet
Used to actually rain. Yeah, so you accomplished that, for sure. I wrote down “nostalgia” and “sweetness”. That’s what I thought while listening to it.
Thank you. The lyrics that say, “Walk down lovers lane. Nothing but this gravel road,” it's like the first line. My grandmother's property where we all grew up, my mother, my aunt, and a lot of my friends grew up there. It was just this super rough property that has all these outbuildings. And if you go into town and you meet any of the locals, half of them have lived there. It's always been this old stomping ground. It's very West Coast hippie, in a way, which is where I get a lot of the sound for that song. That one lyric was kind of like, you would always walk up and down the driveway and it's this long gravel road. It's the only road that's gravel too. It's like the only road that nobody's paved yet, you know? I think that it's more just imagery. I just kinda write from images.
The nostalgia definitely comes from missing stuff and missing what it used to be and not in like an old head kind of mentality, not in like a “Make America Great Again” mentality, you know what I mean? Of course not, but more, I just wish that California wasn't burning. I just wish that there was more water. Just wishful thinking. I try to capture that over and over and over again.
In terms of your creative process, like you said, you focus on the music first. Can you speak more to that, particularly for this upcoming album?
Yeah. I definitely focus on the music first. Singing was the last thing I ever did. I was always playing instruments and writing songs with other people in mind for singing or for other vocalists. My first step in the creative process is always coming up with music. When I listen to songs that I think think are inspiring or that I have on repeat, you know, I was just telling somebody the other day, actually. We were all super high, sitting around a campfire, talking about music and art and the current climate of the world when it comes to the art world and stuff like that. I was kind of going back into what I've been doing over the last couple months of just writing and producing for people and myself and whatnot. And I’ll just, whatever I have on all the time, I'll just listen to it for two weeks straight. It'll be a couple artists that are usually a vintage record or an older artist that I just really identify with. Lately I've been listening to a lot of Joan Baez. Maybe it's one measure of a song that just hits me right. I'll be like, I wish I could write a whole album off just that one moment of that song. So I'll try to do that over and over and over again. And try to harness that more and more and more.
I feel like there's a great comparison with a painter or something. Or writers, writers are like that. You just write, you know, hundreds of drafts. Or maybe not hundreds, but you know what I mean? You write hella drafts and then, like, you finally nailed it and you know, your intuition is like, oh, that's the one. Yeah, that’s the right one for sure. And so when it comes to vocals in lyrics, it's unfortunately a lot of the time, if my vocals don't sound good over it, then I usually just scrap it and it sucks. It'll be like the coolest piece of music. And I'll just be like, oh, I'm just gonna put it over here and just save it for somebody else down the road. But the lyrics are always kind of hard 'cause I really don't like writing conventionally.
Verse, chorus, verse, chorus.
Yeah, exactly. People are always telling me I need to follow that structure, and I'm trying to get better at it ‘cause I do think it'll pay off, you know?
I also struggle with that ‘cause I'm the opposite as you. I was a writer first. So most of my songs start with poetry.
But you know what, that's the thing, I think that’s the best art. There's a whole world out there for people that are songwriters and they work on pop records and they write the new Beyonce record. And they write, you know, like Dua Lipa’s next album, or whatever. I love all that stuff, don't get me wrong, but that is a carved out formula for the masses, for sure. And that's, that's great. But when it's debatable, that's really artistic in my opinion, which is controversial, I'm sure. But a lot of the records that I love and that I listen to and that I identify with and that I, you know, find inspiring are usually, just the people have to not know what they're doing.
I actually really feel like the music you make before you understand how to do anything—when you’re not super familiar with your medium, whatever it is—and you don’t know the rules, it is easier to be much more free with it.
I totally agree. The worst thing that I ever did was try to become a professional at it. I feel like I listen to these old demos sometimes. I'm not saying I'm doomed, but like, I used to be able to write a song and play the drums, the bass, the guitar, the keys, and record it all in like a day and be excited about it. Now it takes me 30 times— 30, like that's an exaggeration. It just takes me so much longer to achieve what I have in my head. But I also think that that's because my ideas are getting a little bit more outlandish.
How so?
There's only, there's two ways I can look at it. Willa, there's one way, one way is that I'm doomed, you know? Things are getting harder for me. Or the other one is, I'm becoming more of a genius. You know?
I think it's the second one. I don't think you’re doomed.
I mean, I'm definitely not. Maybe.
Maybe you're in a transitional phase as an artist.
I think my quality of work is getting better and better. I'm really happy with what I'm writing now and what I'm actually putting out in the world. I'm only gonna give the world what I think is my best work.
How is your upcoming album differentiating from your last album, “Freak Pop Novelty”?
I thought my last album was perceived really great. It got synced on a bunch of TV shows and each song felt like a really strong single to me.
I wrote all those songs in Brooklyn. I finished them all in Brooklyn, but I started the project in California. I took a month's vacation back home where I got to use a bunch of Bob Weir's gear from the Grateful Dead.
That’s amazing. How did that happen?
It just happened. I just hit up a friend of mine who was like the youngest employee at the studios in Marin. I said, Hey, I want to do a little like solo writing trip. Could I borrow some gear? He was like, Send me a list of what you need. And when you get into town drive over to, you know, I'll tell you where to meet me. And it was very much like a drug deal. I showed up and I had to drive through a gate, they saw my face and I walked in, I drove into this location and I opened up my trunk and he loaded all the goods into the back of my car. I took off and I just recorded with them and used them.
And they all said “Weir” all over them. I got to fly back to New York with all these ideas. It was just really special. The last record just felt really right. I want six singles, I want them to all be able to stand on their own and then I'm gonna package it and I'm gonna put it out there. We pressed it on vinyl and we sold out of the vinyl real fast and it was a really good experience overall.
Your opponent, Tama Gucci, the hot-pink-haired Leo has never shied away from center stage. In fact, he’s stepping into the spotlight as we speak. After years of daylighting behind the reception desk of a hair salon, and moonlighting behind the DJ booth, it's Tama's time to shine. His newest single, “Challenge” is a glowing introduction to his unique style of floating sweet, sensual melodies over blood-pumping beats, and is only a taste of what’s to come. But don’t be shy, his challenge is more collaboration, than the competition–an effort to push people out of their heads and into their truest selves.
To complete the challenge, you must remain in constant motion for all two minutes and thirty-three seconds of Tama Gucci’s newest single “Challenge.” For each two-step you take, you receive one point, for each risk–like talking to the cute person at the other side of the party who’s been eyeing you all night–you receive two. A kiss is worth five bonus points. A giggle-filled trip to the bathroom together: ten. Should you choose to fly solo, bonus points can be unlocked for each enactment of That Bitch Behavior (i.e applying lipgloss, knowing all the words to Roman’s Revenge, telling the girl crying in the bathroom to break up with her boyfriend because she deserves better). She does. And so do you. You deserve a night without FOMO, without proving you’re having fun, without jumping through hoops to get that one certain someone to notice you, while dodging the advances of people who can’t seem to stop noticing you.
The objective is clear, the intentions are pure: have fun, you deserve it. So…do you accept?
Stream "Challenge" here, and check out the office PREMIERE video and exclusive interview below.
Is this your first official interview? How do you want to introduce yourself for your debut?
I don’t really do many of them. I’ve done interviews where they send me questions and I answer it, but never really like this. And well, I’m Tama Gucci. I’m like how old am I?
What grade are you in? What’s a fun fact about you?
One fun fact I would say is… It’s the worst question in the world. Honestly. It’s really such a hard thing because I’m such a weirdo. I feel like I have so many fun facts. I would say one fun fact about me is I love burgers. If I go to a restaurant and I see a burger on the menu, it could be a restaurant known for having the best steaks in the world. I’m still getting the burger. But, generally about me, I’ve been living in New York for about three, four years now. I was working at a salon part-time as a receptionist. Now I’m doing full-time music. And I have Tamascorner which is my merch site.
Tell me about the name Tama Gucci. Where did it come from?
So my dad used to take me every Thursday morning to go by Tamagotchis, because he got paid on Thursday. So I would go to Wallgreens where they were like $15 and buy one very single week and then go to school. At some point he was like, I'm not buying you these anymore, so I bought them for myself. I probably had like 30, but I was killing them. I had a couple for so long that the battery died and I was devastated. I had one that died of old age, but I never kept them all alive. But Tamagotchis were a big part of my childhood, they were my favorite toy. And before I started making music I wanted to be amodel, and I was like "I'm gonna book something for Gucci" because I just loved the brand Gucci as well. And then, well I'm a barb, and like Slumber Party with Gucci Mane came out, and I was just kind of like Tamagotchi, take the gotchi and put Gucci and I was like, oh my god, this is genius, and i'ts just been that ever since.
Where were you before New York?
I was in Miami. So I was born and raised in Miami. Which is such an interesting place to be born and raised because there's not many. I guess there's not many things from your reference as far as like what I'm doing now growing up in Miami. So it was kind of fun because I could kind of do whatever I want.
What was the music that you heard there growing up? How has it informed your music now?
Definitely a lot of Daddy Yankee. You get so much Latin music. That and also Haitian music. Miami is such a big culture pot. It’s like Cubans, Puerto Ricans, a lot of Haitians and Jamaicans so it was just all that like Caribbean music. And then in Florida, we love like music that’s sped up. I think it has a name now, it’s something hardcore something like that–
Nightcore?
Yeah, that’s what it is. But I don’t think we called it that. Miami definitely shaped my taste in music because a lot of the time when I'm making music, without even knowing it, it sounds very Caribbean and I love singing slow over fast beats. Kind of just gliding over it but it's so much going on in the background. I like when there’s so much happening in the background, but It’s just smooth with the vocals. The sound I go for is definitely sexy. Not to be like tooting my own horn, but I tend to describe things a lot that people are too polite to say when it comes to like being interested in somebody or feeling yourself. I'm also a Leo so all of my music or anything I make has Leo aspect. There's When I say I’m a Leo people will be like “I know” because of what I’m singing about or they'll be like I just know you're a Leo because of what your music. So it definitely makes anything that I touch bring a sense of confidence when you absorb it. And then there's also something romantic about it as well. Or it’s like sassy and kinda brooding.
No that’s cool, like there’s a vulnerability to it or a boastfulness. That feels so true for “Challenge.” Can you tell me a bit about the song and how you came up with it?
I made Challenge right before everything locked down. The whole idea was basically like, you go to a party. You're not there with anyone and you don't have any intentions of getting with anyone. You just know that you look really cute and that you want to dance. And if you see somebody else's cute and they want to dance as well, it’s like challenging them to meet on the dance floor and just escape everything else. Just dance. I think nowadays everybody takes themselves seriously. I would try don't blame them. I believe that social media has been a big part of that because people make money literally off of just posting pictures of themselves. So they start to take themselves very critically. You know, they start to overanalyze everything and that can affect them just letting loose on the dance floor. Or also when you go out to dance or you say you're going to a party, a lot of people are worrying about capturing moments and going there with the intentions of leaving with someone or being seen by someone instead of just going with the pure intentions of dancing, and feeling cute with yourself.
How do you prepare for a party?
I always, always, always, always have a joint. I don't know how I've gotten into the habit, but I always have a joint in my bag. And I smoke a joint before I go. I order my vodka cranberry. I call it a pretty girl drink. I saw a tweet the other day and it was like men used to build houses and now they order vodka cranberries. And I was like that is so true. It's just like that's my go-to drink. So I'll have a vodka cranberry. Those are the things that I need to like have fun and it's pretty simple.
The music video for “Challenge” is also a really cool party scene. What was the concept and process of filming that like?
I think it's “Slave 4 U by Britney Spears. Where it's like she's kind of like in this warehouse moment and it's like you don't know where they are, but the whole idea was that we own this huge building, which was the Market Hotel, and everyone here is–maybe they’re in the K hole or just coming out of one–but everyone is just dancing having a drink chillin like and then there's music playing as well and if you want to dance and escape you can. That was the vibe and something that we visually referenced before we made it it was that Britney video. So that was kind of like the vibe of it.
So it seems like Britney is a theme. Let’s talk about Britney.
She’s actually the blueprint. like a lot of ways people don't realize that they're referencing her and I know who Britney references are in there and that's like actually special to like Janet Jackson is like a part of it but like Janet Jackson also was inspiring Britney as well. So you know, like there's, those are the two I will say main focus points as far as like references go because their whole thing was dancing and like feeling yourself and escaping.
I feel like they’re both pop icons who had that vulnerability and that boastfulness too, especially during a time when women weren’t really allowed to express that in pop culture.
Exactly. That's perfect that you said that because that's really why I naturally gravitated towards it. But it was Jonathan's idea to like a reference that video specifically just because of how well they're synced up. You know, you can take the Slave 4 U video and then put Challenge on it and it's like, oh my god, this makes so much sense. You know?
What are some of your other favorite Britney songs or music videos you grew up watching?
Oh my god. “If You Seek Amy” When I heard it, I was obsessed with listening to the radio at that time. And I remember hearing it and being like If You Seek Amy… and I was like, “all of the girls and all of the boys are begging to F U C K ME . I was like, this is the most genius thing ever. And then I dug into some of her albums, like the whole Circus album. My favorite. She’s got this one song called “Mannequin” and yeah, there are just so many classics by her but “If You Seek Amy” was like my favorite.
So what do you challenge people to do when listening to the song?
I challenge people to stop worrying about what other people are doing. Just focus on yourself. Go and dance and have fun and show up to places with a purpose of having fun and doing it for nobody else but yourself. That’s the challenge.
Full credits:
CHALLENGE - TAMA GUCCI @tamahoochie
DIRECTOR: Jonathan Qualtere @jonathanqualtere
DP: Daniel Vignal @danielvignal
PRODUCER / AD : Max Pavlichenko @maxpvlchnkok
CREATIVE DIRECTION: Matthew Flatley @delinquent.t
CHOREOGRAPHER / PRODUCER: Robert Vail @vailrobert
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Chazz Foggie @chazz_._
GAFFER: Rodrigo Obregon @robregonubidia
STYLIST: Ore Zaccheus @orexolu
MAKEUP ARTIST: Anna Kurihara @annakuriharabeauty
EDITOR / 1st AC: Pierce Pyrzenski @piercayy
TITLES: Sebastian Chicchon @jager.noon
2nd AC: Chao Xue @xuechaoming
KEY GRIP: Nico Vallejo @nicovallejodp__
COLORIST: Josh Bohoskey @breezus_christ
LOCATION: Market Hotel @market.hotel
MUA ASSIST: Nanase @nana7se
PA’S:
Kevin Feng @kevinbfeng
Sydney Crawford @_sydneycrawford_
Anna Jarcynska @annajarcz
Colby Amos @colbyaalexis
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS:
Jake Honig @honigjake
Jonathan Qualtere JQFU LLC
Special Thanks:
Ava Van Osdol @avavanosdol
Rash @rash_nyc
Carli / Market Hotel
Briana Cheng @banacrisp
Starring:
Aramis Sostre @ajaxsos
Emilio Tamez @3miliotamez
Alaska Riley @alaskariley
Dusty @reallydoedusty
Emil Dizon @emildizon__
TATA @natashakalila
Sbby @fck.sbby
Evan Fisk @evanf123
Evan Jean @evannnjean
Robert Vail @vailrobert
Lauren Bellamy @laurenbellamy
The Leone Bros @theleonnebros
Adam Kenner @kennabunnywong
Robi @robecho
Charley @charleyshealy
John Lempka
Toast
She navigated school in her homeland with a stringent inclination to not break any rules, the motivation for her goodie-two-shoes approach being split between untethered curiosity about what she was learning, and a high-priority desire to someday attend college in, and permanently move to, the United States. Half-Icelandic and half-Chinese, she was born to a family as musical as it was culturally diverse — her mother played classical violin with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra; her grandfather taught the instrument at China’s Central Conservatory of Music — which, with the added stimulant of rigorous schooling, translated into a restless devotion to grasping the jazz-rooted soundscapes that furnished her home, in hopes of eventually making them her own.
Boasting self-deprecating lyrics that would probably do numbers on the right corner of Twitter, a new-age story far removed from those told by dust-covered old white men rotting in record collections nationwide, and a debut album called Everything I Know About Love set to double down on both of these things later this month, Laufey, who goes mononymously, looks and sounds nothing like the olden jazz vanguard responsible for laying the foundation she expounds upon today. But as she peers contemplatively behind pitch-black oval sunglasses in a cozy Upper West Side community garden, the honking buzz of Manhattan’s ritzy bowels churning off in the near distance, she mulls over what she hasn’t heard from that era until now, and why.
“Oh– There’s this album I discovered recently — it’s Charlie Parker with Strings,” she says animatedly, capping off a list of things she’s been listening to lately. (A lot of Faye Webster.) Laufey shares a Spotify account with her father — he did get her a separate login of her own at one point, but by that time, all of her music was already saved on his — so, every now and then, whatever he may have in rotation will make a cameo appearance on her home page. “One day, he obviously liked the album, so it just showed up in my library,” she continues. “It’s so good. I can’t believe I didn’t know about that. I feel like, as a string player who loves jazz music, I’m very surprised that I hadn’t discovered that album. That’s been on repeat.”
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Laufey, 23, plays a similar role for the growing listener base she’s struck a chord with. The nearly half-million consumers that follow her page on TikTok — where she posts homely guitar clips, vocal duets, and intimate, generationally ambiguous performances for a markedly newer audience — often flock to her comment sections to describe her sound as “nostalgic,” or somewhat evocative of faint memories. Whether rooted in nostalgia or a longing for something they can’t put a finger on, the general consensus across the singer’s hefty social media following is a deja vu-inflected sense of shock, understandably wielded at the notion that it’s a shame we all hadn’t discovered this sooner.
This lateness may not necessarily be so much a fault of her generation, as it is the fault of an infrastructure long notorious for its exclusivity. “I still am [scared] to a certain extent,” she says of nose-in-the-air jazz attitudes, “and it’s funny, because even though I’ve had all of this formal music education both in classical and jazz music, sometimes it still feels — a little bit — not very accessible to me. So I’m like, How does this even feel to people who haven’t studied music?”
Laufey’s most recent performance came a few days ago at the Newport Jazz Festival, where, although it’s a stage she’s dreamed of playing since she was a kid, the prospect of bringing a new-world act into old-world territory still proved daunting. “I went back into my music college shell a little bit, where I was like Oh my God, I’m sure my professors are walking around here,” she laughs. “But then I was like Wait — this is exactly why I’m here. I need to push through these stigmas and these ideas that I’ve had. And once I got through that, I was very happy.”
For a while, rigid music-school shells contributed just as much to her sonic literacy as it did to an imaginative illiteracy. At the institutions she studied in growing up, it was a matter of course that she’d be given sheet music to read from, and judged based on accuracy. It was only when she got to Boston’s revered Berklee College of Music — yes, she did wind up making good on that goal to study in and move to the States — that she learned that breaking a rule or two wasn't punishable by death. Her earliest courses there banked as heavily on improvisation as her old schools did on precision, which, predictably for someone whose childhood was rife with classical strings and a trained ear, posed a new, existential kind of challenge. “I was a cello principal there, so I was put in a jazz band, and it was like [clap] Alright, improvise,” she recounts. “And I was like… What? I had no clue, and I felt like everything I was doing was wrong, and they’re all like Oh, there are no wrongs in improvisation, but I’m like How can that be? This doesn’t sound right.”
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But by the time she graduated from Berklee in 2021, a fluid creative process worked its way into being a focal point of her approach — and at the very least, over the 40-plus minutes that comprise her forthcoming LP, either she isn’t doing anything wrong, or she’s having too much fun to care. Titled as a tongue-in-cheek nod to the fact that she’s never been in love (with another human), Everything I Know About Love sees Laufey masterfully find balance between a fundamental jazz skeleton, and the self-reflective, intrinsic, rom-com-ready flesh she stuffs within its bones. On single “Dear Soulmate,” released this past July, she asks a series of lovelorn questions to an unnamed interest eventually revealed to be hypothetical. “Do you live in New York City?,” she inquires softly in the song’s opening lines, “Or a couple towns away? Wherever you are, I’d jump in my car, just to see you today.” The tune ends with fitting words for an album dedicated to a fleeting concept: “I can’t wait to fall in love with you,” she sings, and with a wistful string of arpeggiations on both a piano and an acoustic guitar, the music fades out.
Sonically speaking, “Dear Soulmate” and Everything I Know About Love both bank on the same generational fusion that has made Laufey compelling to young audiences and old ones alike — at the same time that she’s curating soundscapes not too far removed from something you may hear on My Fair Lady, she’s also finding elusive nooks and crannies through which she can stick touchstones compatible for a generation less likely to be streaming Charlie Parker on Spotify. The dichotomy is one that makes her as appealing as she is perhaps polarizing. At this stage in the game, she doesn’t often get negative feedback online, but on the rare occasions that she does — and it isn’t something trivial about an outfit she’s wearing, “because for some reason that’s still a problem in our society” — it might come from members of an older musical lineage taking issue with what she’s doing to leave opportunistic cracks in historically-closed doors. “It’s rarely about the music, which is very encouraging, because I was scared that older people would come and be like, Why are you putting this drum beat into this jazz standard?,” she says. “Or vice versa, where young people would be like this is so old — I rarely get comments like that.”
But still, the potential is both present for the musician, and terrifying for the growing litany of aspiring ones that look to her for inspiration. Many of her messages across social media platforms come from young artists with varying versions of the same question — how do you overcome nervousness and start putting your work on the internet? — and, although she reports matter-of-factly that she’s learned to largely eliminate the fear factor for herself, it’s something she knows is increasingly challenging for children of an ever-evolving digital age. “I totally understand how extremely daunting it can be — especially if you’re in middle school or high school, those are brutal ages — if you want to post something of yourself singing, which you’ve never done before,” she says. “But I always told myself: let the trash take itself out. If they don’t want to stick around for my music and who I am, let them go.”
Laufey was largely introduced to American audiences when she performed her affecting single “Like The Movies” as a musical guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier this year. It was far from her first time braving the public eye. When she was 15 years old in Iceland, she performed as a soloist in the same national Symphony Orchestra that housed her mother’s violin; she went on to become a finalist on Ísland Got Talent (the Icelandic installment of America’s Got Talent) while she was still a teenager, then, one year later, became the then-youngest competitor in The Voice Iceland’s history. A large factor in taking the pressure off was Iceland’s small-scale stakes — “I think I was aware that people knew who I was,” she says, “but at the end of the day, everyone in Iceland kind of knows each other” — though nonetheless, the gauntlet allowed her to gain considerable, now-tangible ground in making music as public-facing as it is introspective.
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Now, the personal-to-communal dynamic is one she both relishes in, and credits to the newly vulnerable tones social media has evolved to strike. “Half these songs I write, I’m just making fun of myself,” she admits. “That’s very modern humor. Everybody’s just making fun of themselves hoping that someone will relate.” A walls-down ethos like this one, tied together with a progressively elastic sense of structure, is part of why she says “there’s never been a better time to make music than now”: “My generation, this TikTok generation, Gen-Z, they don’t care so much about genre anymore. You’re not going into a record store and going straight to the section of the music that you love. You’re going on a streaming platform and turning on a mood playlist. It’s so much more about feeling, now— do I want to feel cozy? Do I want something more energetic? Everything is more about vibe, and I think that’s the best thing that’s ever happened to music.”
A good portion of Everything I Know About Love arose from lyrics written in dorm rooms at Berkley, when these future-friendly sonic liberationist ideas were first beginning to make sense for her. “When I moved to college alone,” she recounts with a sheepish grin, “I started breaking some rules for the first time. And it’s funny, because I was so focused on following rules — but somehow, the second I started breaking them, my life started getting so much better. Both breaking musical rules, and a couple of life rules.” She turns to her publicist, who is sitting on a nearby bench. “That’s really bad advice to give people, I’m so sorry — as my publicist, is that okay to say?”
Her publicist says yes (which is why you just read it), and for what it sounds like, it’s quite likely that every time she asked herself a variation of the same question — is that okay to say? — over the recording process of her new album, the same answer came back. On one track, she admits, with a motherly intonation strewn over acoustic guitar arpeggiations, a slew of not-so-impressive things: the first verse alone touches on directionlessness, absent-mindedness, and a tendency to talk to the walls of her room. By the end of the song, though — much like the rest of her music — embarrassing anecdotes aside, when she relays it all back to the album’s titular mystery and its strange doings, it’s difficult not to admit that we’ve all been there.
Part of what makes her honest stories so accessible is the package they’re delivered in. Most of the online commenters that call her music “nostalgic” credit the sense to her voice, which oscillates between the aged wisdom of an old soul, and the exploratory openness of a young one. The ethereal exploits of both her vocal register, and her artistry writ large, are a quality she absorbed from growing up in an equally ethereal place, locationally and mentally. She moved around more than the average young person, so in place of a concrete geographical sense of home, she instead found belonging in music and family. “I was really close with my family, because we moved around so much. My twin sister was, like, my best friend. I literally wrote a song about it,” she says. “But growing up was fun. When you grow up in Iceland, it’s so isolated, and you have this innate sense of… you become a dreamer. You get this sense of wanderlust that I think definitely shows through in my music.” Asked whether she still considers herself a dreamer: “I even used to be more of a realist, and now I’m absolutely delusional.”
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A long-standing dispute in improvisational sonic forms like jazz hinges on the hazy line between delusion and genius. For Laufey, delusion looks more like a dreamscape than it does a mental institution, and the threshold between that and “genius” — the “official” standing of an artist who has made it — is manifesting itself right now in where she chooses to lay her head. She’s in New York right now for a string of promo gigs, interviews and finishing touches to be made on the business side of releasing her new record. The busybody underbelly of the city is a polar opposite from the notably less-hectic Los Angeles she’s called home since graduating from Berklee. “I think it’s a young musician’s rite of passage to go live that movie life for a few years,” she says of LA’s appeal, as, ironically, loud construction vehicles give her voice stiff competition somewhere in the distance. “I was stepping out of my comfort zone when moving to L.A, and I definitely think it’s important to not get too comfortable.” That doesn’t mean it’s easy to not kick your feet up: “What I will say, is that there is no feeling like getting off of a sweaty tour bus and just laughing in the sun.”
She’ll have another shot at not getting too comfortable post-travel come this fall, when she’s slated to embark on her first ever headlining tour — a 32-date slew of international performances that, as of the writing of this piece, is completely sold out with the exception of four shows. Performances for Laufey aren’t as stringent and to-the-books as a tightly-wound touring schedule might suggest, and coming off of her set at Newport Jazz a few days ago, she speaks on them with the same carefree flair that populates the music when it’s on wax: “I love doing solo sets," she says, "because I can kind of change it up on the spot. The amount of times I’ve been in the middle of a performance, looked down at a setlist and been like, I really don’t want to do that right now, and just done some other song…”
As much as this may be a common facet to an inherently-improvisational medium, it’s also one of several glimpses into a producer-consumer barrier Laufey is intent on breaking down. “Laufey as an artist is exactly who Laufey is as a person,” she tells me at one point. “The Laufey you get to know on stage and on social media as the artist is just very much who I am. There really is no difference. The way that I present myself on social media hasn’t changed at all since I became an artist. The way I talk, or engage with my friends, hasn’t changed. I write about my own experiences, and I experience to write.”
The collective experience retold by Everything I Know About Love is one Laufey simply describes as that of “a young woman in this century.” The knowledge she’s accumulated on love thus far is as far-reaching as it is dense — from interests that didn’t feel the same way, to people she herself didn’t feel the same way about, to dates that stood her up, to afternoons spent talking to bedroom walls — and for the great lengths she goes to make fun of such experience for the sake of empowering listeners, she also goes great lengths in redirecting a jazz lineage long hinged on stories not nearly reflective of her own. Laufey’s agenda is a simple one — to translate old music for younger ears — and without groundwork being laid to build bridges between generational gaps, genres like the ones she specializes in may be headed for the graves they spent decades of exclusivity digging for themselves.
With a debut LP coming out soon, a headlining tour slated to follow it, and more vulnerable work on the horizon, though, jazz isn’t going anywhere if Laufey has anything to say about it. She hasn’t been in love before, but if there’s anything she is in love with, it’s her music — enough, at least, to lug it up from an old-world past, and revitalize it for new audiences who never knew it was what they needed. “It’s not only love towards some sort of significant other,” she says of love, at one point. “I think it can also just be love for movies.”
Love for movies hinges on a love for stories, and when she leaves the community garden with a slightly high-stakes live-stream gig on her schedule for later today, very few signs point to her being done telling them. The ears — whether from an old vanguard shaking its fists at her revolution, or a new one falling in love with it — are perked. As for her own ears, they're likely busy with whatever her dad has been listening to on Spotify.