Laufey, Gen Z’s Pop Jazz Icon, Sings for the Anxious Generation

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From “The New York Times,” I’m Anna Martin. This is “Modern Love,” and today I’m talking to singer songwriter Laufey.

archived recording (laufey)

(SINGING) Don’t you notice how

I get quiet when there’s no one else around

You might think from the warm, mature tone in her voice, the jazz and bossa nova influence, that Laufey’s from another generation, but she’s only 25 years old.

archived recording (laufey)

(SINGING) Look at me

I’m as hopeless as a kitten

She got her start in the most Gen Z way possible — on TikTok. During the pandemic, Laufey started posting videos of herself playing guitar, asking her followers what they wanted to hear from her.

Her viral videos led to her debut album, called “Everything I Know About Love,” then a second record called “Bewitched,” which she won a Grammy for this year. And now, she’s on a nationwide tour. So even though Laufey’s music sounds so nostalgic, it’s clearly of the moment. Laufey is speaking to her mostly young fans about experiences they’re likely going through right now — first love, first heartbreak, feeling like you’re someone’s second pick. And through her music, Laufey sang, I’m right here. I’m with you.

archived recording (laufey)

(SINGING) Everybody’s falling in love And I’m falling behind

Today, Laufey reads an essay called “An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill,” by Coco Mellors. And Laufey opens up about how anxiety manifests in her own relationships and how she turns that anxiety into art.

Laufey, welcome to “Modern Love.”

Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Laufey, throughout your career, you’ve cultivated these really direct relationships with your fans. You talk with them on TikTok. You respond to them on Instagram. And recently, you’ve been connecting with them in a much more literary way. You’re doing a book club. What are you reading right now?

Well, we are reading “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig. Last month, we read “Circe” by Madeline Miller. It’s a really fun way to connect with the fans kind of in a different way and have storytelling as a way to connect us all together.

What makes a good story for you? That’s a big question, I know.

Big question. I think there’s a level of suspense and release to a good story. There’s some sort of unexpected twist and a release. I mean, it sounds simple, but a happy ending, right, or some sort of ending that makes sense. [LAUGHS]

Does that kind of narrative apply to your songwriting as well?

Oh, absolutely. I talk about tension and release all the time, especially in chords, right? If you hear a chord that sounds almost wrong and you move one note, and then it just resolves, that’s what we talk about as tension and release in music, and I’m all about tension and release.

Yeah, I mean, these ideas of release, of suspense, they all feel very related to the “Modern Love” essay you chose to read today. It’s by Coco Mellors. Can you tell me what it’s about?

She’s talking about falling in love with this neighbor who doesn’t really care about her and, I guess, this overarching theme of being anxiously attached. And we kind of visit her past and what has built up to this anxious attachment style. And then we kind of follow her through as she finds a more secure love.

Yeah, this piece has a lot to do with attachment theory, which I feel like everyone kind of knows at this point. But just a refresher, it divides people into three categories based on how we relate to romantic partners. There’s anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, and secure attachment. And the author of this essay is definitely anxious. She’s experiencing that tension that I’m sure so many people can relate to. It’s that stress that comes when you like someone so much more than they like you.

I was going to say, I think when somebody doesn’t give us quite enough, it forms this addiction, almost, because then when we get it, we have this satisfying sense of relief. And then, of course, they drop out again, but then you’re aching for that sense of, oh, he does like me, or, oh, he will sleep with me, or he’s going to love me. And so, I think that’s kind of what we’re always itching for, that sense of love, even though it’s not really love. It’s just breadcrumbing you, almost, if that makes sense.

It does make sense. This essay begins with the author, Coco Mellors, hanging on, basically, for dear life to a guy who just wants something — the dreaded word — “casual.” Do you want to go ahead and read the essay for us?

“An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill.”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

“The year after I stopped drinking, I fell in love with my neighbor. I was 27, working as a copywriter, and living in a studio apartment on Gay Street in the West Village. He lived across the street in a larger apartment that had beautiful morning light and a mouse infestation.

One afternoon, he found me sitting on his stoop, smoking a cigarette, and sat down, looking like a young Paul Newman. We talked for a long time, during which I learned that he owned a local restaurant and had recently broken up with his girlfriend. Eventually, we headed up to his apartment, where we kissed until it felt like it was only us and the mice in his walls still awake in the whole city.

By the time he walked me back to my building, it was past midnight, and I had already decided that our wedding should be right there on Gay Street. I was calculating what kind of city permits that would require when he placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘I really like you,’ he said, ‘but the restaurant keeps me pretty busy, and I just want to be clear that I’m not looking for a relationship right now.’

I looked up at him under the yellow glow of the street lamps and did what so many hopeful single people have done before me. I told a lie, wishing it were true. ‘I’m not looking for anything serious either,’ I said. His face softened. ‘That’s great. So we can just keep it chill?’ I smiled. ‘I’m a very chill person. You’ll see.’

He would not see. What followed was a two-year tug of war. He could not commit, and I could not accept it. I tried every tool in my arsenal to get him to be my boyfriend. Nothing could change the fact that we didn’t want the same thing. Instead of freeing ourselves from this mismatch, one of us would eventually leave our light on, knowing the other would see it from the street below and send a text to come up.

I was repeating a familiar pattern. I grew up chasing my father’s love, a man who, like my neighbor, could be affectionate or absent depending on the day. Now, I was pursuing my neighbor with the same fervor. The more space he wanted, the closer I longed to be. I pretended to have no needs, then felt distraught when he didn’t meet them. I would get high off of his attention, then crash when he withdrew.

I would later learn this dynamic is called an anxious avoidant relationship. At the time, I only knew it hurt. And for the first time in my adult life, I didn’t have alcohol to numb me. So I went to an ashram upstate and prayed for the obsession to lift. I changed his name in my phone to Prosecco, so I would remember how emotionally hungover I felt after seeing him.

I went to a weekly meditation group led by a Buddhist teacher and, at the risk of sounding dramatic, changed my life forever. He taught me that anxious and avoidant people often connect quickly and powerfully, but the relationships are a challenge at best and doomed at worst. ‘You need to be with someone secure,’ he said. ‘You mean boring.’ He smiled. ‘Security isn’t boring. You’ll see.’

Eventually it was obsessing over my neighbor that grew boring. I stopped leaving my light on all night, got some proper sleep, found a therapist, and became open to the possibility of meeting someone else. That someone was Henry, a friend of a friend I met at a film screening. He had freckles all over his face and a big, unselfconscious smile.

He was obsessed with being outdoors, loved to cook, and was a moderate drinker.

By contrast, I considered a trip to Central Park hiking, got my meals — sushi, cupcakes, pre-cut fruit — at the Gourmet Deli, and wasn’t moderate at anything. I liked him instantly, but I didn’t fantasize about marrying him.

For one of our early dates, Henry made reservations at three restaurants and let me pick which one to go to. On another, we saw a documentary about the evils of salmon farming. In the following months, we met up once or twice a week to eat, go to the theater, or see an exhibition. There was no waiting up late for him, no ‘will he, won’t he show up.’

I was used to downing a person like a shot, but with Henry, I sipped. He surprised me with his juggling skills, and later, about his role as the peacekeeper between his older brother and younger sister. Later, he told me about his friend who was killed in a hit and run during the first year of university, the shock and the grief of it. Each new thing I learned felt precious.

Still, I was weary. Where was the high, the excitement? I thought falling for someone should be like having an orgasm and a heart attack at once. ‘Shouldn’t it be more difficult than this?’ I asked my therapist. ‘In real life, good things are allowed to be easy,’ she said. ‘Trust it.’

A few months into seeing each other, I gave Henry a book of illustrated animal facts, expecting him to appreciate it as a thoughtful, if not particularly noteworthy, gesture. ‘This is the best gift ever,’ he said. He went through the book page by page, wondrously repeating the best facts aloud. ‘Hummingbirds flap their wings up to 200 times a second.’

Henry didn’t need things to be dramatic to feel alive because he paid attention to the small details that make life feel miraculous. His capacity for delight, his seemingly boundless sense of wonder was one of the first things I loved about him. I just didn’t know it at the time.

My earlier experiences of falling in love had felt like being stuffed in a barrel and thrown off a waterfall, a blind tumble, both euphoric and terrifying. Falling in love with Henry felt like being carried along a smooth river to sea.

It wasn’t all smooth, of course. I was still me, after all, still anxious. For the first few months, every morning that Henry left my apartment to return to his place, I would scramble out of bed and insist on walking him the one block to the subway. His departure stirred some vague panic in me, triggering the childhood fear of abandonment, of love walking out the door.

Of course, I’d never admitted that to anyone I had dated, until, one day, when Henry turned to me outside the subway entrance, gave me a funny smile, and said, ‘Why do you always want to walk me? I sense it’s important to you, but I’m not sure why.’

My first instinct was to lie, wishing it were true. Instead, I took a deep breath. ‘Actually, I have this thing when we separate where I get —’ I fluttered a hand over my chest — ‘really anxious. I think I’m afraid you won’t come back.’

Henry gave me a long look, and my heart dropped. I waited for him to dive headfirst down the subway stairs away from me. ‘I see,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘Would it make you feel less anxious if we walked around the block together one more time?’

I could have laughed with relief. I could have pressed my palms into my eyes and cried like a child. But I kept myself together and nodded. We walked once more around the block, and then he got on the subway, and I went about my day.

A year later, we moved in together. Six months after that, we got married. Today, we live in a house in Los Angeles with a small garden regularly frequented by hummingbirds. ‘Up to 200 flaps a second,’ Henry likes to remind me. ‘Isn’t that remarkable?’ ‘It is.’”

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Man, if I had a nickel for every time I needed to go to an ashram upstate to get rid of a crush — am I right?

[LAUGHS]: I’m like seeing a bit of myself in this — not that I’ve gone to an ashram, but now I kind of want to.

[LAUGHS]: When we come back, how Laufey’s first ever date and first ever ghosting became the creative spark that kicked off her career. Stay with us.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So, Laufey, you just read Coco Mellor’s “Modern Love” essay, and you said that you saw yourself in her story. Tell me what parts resonated with you.

I think this feeling of anxious attachment and avoidant also I think I’ve definitely felt versions of. Sometimes the further I get into secure relationships, I expect something to go wrong.

Are you saying that you identify as slightly anxiously attached?

I think so. I thought I wasn’t, but I think I am.

[LAUGHS]: I mean, how has that showed up in your dating life?

I’ve kind of blocked out boys and dating when I was younger. I don’t know why. I guess I was just like, I’ve got to focus on school and music. And I was just so embarrassed. I was so embarrassed.

But it wasn’t until I moved to the States and moved to — I went to university in Boston that I kind of allowed myself to open up and be a young woman and date for the first time. And I remember the first time I started going on dates with this guy, and my first thought was, oh, my god. Does everybody feel like this? Because I felt insane.

[LAUGHS]: Oh!

I felt insane. And this first guy was definitely like this push and pull. Like, he didn’t really care that much. But I remember I would receive a text from him. I was like, oh, my god. This is like a movie! And then he ended up ghosting me, and I was so —

No!

— hurt. I was so sad. And every single feeling I was feeling, whether it was the excitement after a date or the anxiety about receiving a text or the hurt of being ghosted, the only thought I had throughout the whole thing was, does everybody feel like this? Because I feel insane.

[LAUGHS]: I know exactly what you mean. The first time I felt a real connection, I remember riding the train and looking at the other people on the train and thinking, have all of you felt this way, too? Because it feels like a medical event. Like, I’m not OK.

No, I genuinely felt — it feels like a medical event. I remember I’d look out at the people — this is so dramatic. I had a dorm room that looked over Boston. And I’d like look down at the people and be like, so everybody goes through this?

[LAUGHS]: Wait, I love that. You’re looking at all these people and you’re like, every single one of you has experienced this, too?

Every single one of you has experienced a version of this. And it’s true, and that’s why my first song I released was called “Street by Street.”

I wrote it as I looked out — it’s so cute. It’s like my first little baby song. But I looked out on the street and saw the people. And I was like, I’m gonna reclaim this city because this boy had ruined the city for me. And that was the first song I wrote.

I absolutely want to play this song, but first, I have to ask, like, does this mean that Boston is ruined for you forever? You can never return to that city again?

No, it’s OK. I’ve reclaimed it.

I’ve made my triumphant return. I love Boston.

OK, that’s a big relief for your Boston fans. Let’s play the song that let you reclaim an entire city. It’s called “Street by Street.”

archived recording (laufey)

(SINGING) Step by step

Brick by brick

I’m reclaiming what’s mine

This city is way too small to give away to just one guy

What is it about the potential of a relationship, a crush, a situationship, as some people call it, that’s so creatively inspiring to you?

The songs we listened to growing up are often about this deep heartbreak or falling deeply in love. My experience has been everything in between, the confusion in between, the, “oh, does he love me today, or he won’t love me tomorrow.”

So as I became a writer and started illustrating these feelings through song, I think I really zeroed in on these feelings that I felt like hadn’t been represented in songs as much because those are the lyrics, those are the songs that you hear, and you’re like, wow. She feels like that, and I feel like that. So maybe I’m not that crazy. It’s validating. Even reading what Coco wrote, reading that is very validating. Someone else feels that way.

Yeah, I mean, Coco’s piece reminds me of how I felt in my own relationships, the toxic ones, but also the healthy ones. I always feel some amount of anxiety. And I know that my friends do, too.

I think a lot of women do feel anxiously attached, right? And then, the fear that comes along with it is being crazy, right? It’s like when Coco is seeing Henry away at the subway station, and she tells him I’m scared you won’t come back. She knows that it’s irrational, but she’s still scared that he’s gonna think she’s crazy and then he’s not gonna come back.

Right, but it’s like she’s not being crazy. She points to her addiction, her relationship with her father, all these things that influence her anxious attachment style. And throughout the piece, she’s working really hard to get herself to a secure place and embrace her connection with Henry, the guy who loves hummingbirds. But in the back of her mind, she has this fear that a stable relationship will be boring. Have you ever had that same fear?

Yeah, I’m also deep on the TikTok that talks about safe love being boring.

So I see it all the time. I mean, in my experience with the safe love I’ve received, it isn’t boring. I see why people think that. I think a lot of women don’t recognize safe love because it’s boring in comparison to the push and pull of the guy that’s never going to give you enough. But — this is so cheesy, but safe love is joyous. It’s happy, you know?

I don’t think that’s cheesy. Do you think that’s cheesy? I think that’s real.

Safe love is stable. Let’s use that word instead. It’s stable. So, yeah, you don’t have as much of the tension, the tension and release. But it’s stable and it’s beautiful.

In your experience, is that type of love harder to write a song about? We spoke about the sort of creative inspiration of the more toxic type of love, but what about the secure type?

It is harder to write about. It is. Once you do write about it, it is the most beautiful product, but there are less questions. In my songwriting, it’s a lot of questions being answered, a lot of them about love as well. And when you have a secure type of love, you’re not thinking all the time, like, oh, my god, do you love me? Or why are you doing this? Why did this happen? Why are you looking at her that way? There are no questions. It’s secure. So I definitely think it’s harder.

Do you ever worry that a safe relationship wouldn’t give you enough material for your art?

[CHUCKLING]

No, although a lot of — oh, my god. I’ve seen so many TikToks and tweets where people are like, oh, Laufey can never get in a relationship or else we’ll —

No!

— stop getting songs. We’ll stop getting albums. And I’m like, hey! Please. I’m like, don’t you wish me happiness?

[LAUGHS]: OK, we’re gonna prove all those fans wrong. Is there a song of yours that we can point to that’s about a secure relationship?

Well, the first love song I wrote, called “Best Friend.” I’d never been in love before, and I wanted to write a love song. And I thought about the most secure type of love I’ve ever had in my life. And that is the love I have for my twin sister, and then the love my mother and father have for each other. And I asked my mother, how do when you’ve found the one? And my mother was like, well, your father is my best friend. So I wrote a song called “Best Friend.”

Aw. I mean, this song, I love it because it’s really an ode to secure relationships of all different types. Let’s go out on that song, Laufey. This is “Best Friend.”

archived recording (laufey)

(SINGING) I have never tolerated someone for so long

I’ve never laughed so much

I haven’t written a sad song

There’s no one else I’d rather fall asleep with

And dream with

You’re my best friend in the world

Laufey, thank you so much for this conversation. It was such a blast to talk to you.

Thank you. I’ve had so much fun. I literally could talk about love and relationships. It is something — it really is the one thing that everybody goes through, and nobody really has the answer to. And I love trying to get to the bottom of it. And I know that I will never get to the bottom of it.

Next week, I talk with model and writer Emily Ratajkowski. After her very public divorce, Emily’s now on a mission to shift negative assumptions people may have about her relationship status, starting with her wedding ring.

I basically took the diamonds that were in the original ring and made them into two different rings, which I kind of playfully called divorce rings. I really liked the idea of a woman not having to be ashamed of leaving a relationship, but even just like of having a past.

“Modern Love” is produced by Julia Botero, Christina Djossa, Reva Goldberg, Davis Land, and Emily Lang. It’s edited by our executive producer Jen Poyant, Reva Goldberg, and Davis Land. The “Modern Love” theme music is by Dan Powell. Original music by Dan Powell, Pat McCusker, and Rowan Niemisto.

This episode was mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Our show is recorded by Maddy Masiello. Digital production by Mahima Chablani and Nell Gallogly. The “Modern Love” column is edited by Daniel Jones. Miya Lee is the editor of “Modern Love” projects. I’m Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.