Entertainment
Laufey on creating her own sound
Laufey’s music may not be what you usually think of as “pop,” but if pop is short for popular, then she is indeed a pop star. The 26-year-old Icelander has earned a devoted following blending modern lyrics and music with classical and jazz. “My music is such a combination of the sounds of my childhood,” she said. “It’s just something that’s become a part of me. I wanted to make things that made me happy.
“I loved Golden Age musicals,” said Laufey. “I’d watch ‘Carousel’ and ‘Oklahoma’ and ‘American in Paris’ and ‘Sound of Music.’ They were so beautiful and had these dance breaks and the dresses were floating and the colors – that feeling I got from that, I just wanted to create that feeling.”
The world she inhabits (in her work, anyway) is whimsical and romantic, full of windswept cliffs, frilly dresses and bows … and cello, almost always cello.
Watch Laufey perform “I Wish You Love” with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra:
She says the cello is “as important to me as my voice. And I think it’s really what makes a Laufey song a Laufey song.”
Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir comes by it naturally. Her Icelandic father introduced her to jazz when she was a girl; her Chinese mother played classical violin. So does Laufey’s identical twin sister.
CBS News
Growing up, she said, she felt different: “Everyone was like, you know, going to play soccer after school or dance, and I was sitting down and playing music from the 17th century. And then on top that I was a twin, identical twin. I just feel, like, weird on top of weird, on top of weird.”
And things only got weirder when she started singing, as when she appeared on the TV competition “Iceland’s Got Talent” singing Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You,” at age 13: “I remember going on singing competitions in Iceland when I was younger and they’d always be like, ‘She sounds like a 40-year-old woman that’s been divorced twice and she chain-smokes cigarettes,” Laufey said. “And I was, like, a 13-year-old girl standing on stage being like, okay, like, I just wanted to be a girl. So, yeah I was always a little bit like … felt a little bit like a circus act.”
But Laufey found her footing at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. She started posting original songs and jazz covers on social media during the pandemic, and they quickly went viral.
Laufey performs “I Love You (For Sentimental Reasons”) on guitar and cello:
I asked, “Were you surprised that people were responding to the jazz influences?”
“I was so shocked, because I’d never seen any example of it before,” Laufey replied. “And I’d never seen a community of young people … that was the most shocking part, that it was young people responding to the music. But there was always a part of me that was like, of course, it’s the best music in the world!”
Now she sells out just about every concert – like a recent one in Norfolk, Virginia, where one fan, Alissa, told us, “When I first like showed, like, my parents that, they were like, ‘This is what you guys listen to?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, like, this is what, like, younger people are listening to!'”
Another fan, Logan, said, “I feel like she takes just kind of more ‘old people music’ and pushes it into, like, a newer generation so that more people can enjoy it.”
Laufey’s new album, “A Matter of Time,” comes out this week. A stadium tour will follow.
Her songwriting usually starts on guitar, like her bossa nova-influenced “From the Start.”
But she just as easily can weave in a little classical, as she did on her last album, “Bewitched.” Last year, “Bewitched” briefly knocked Frank Sinatra off the top of the jazz charts – and then, that album won a best traditional pop vocal Grammy Award, beating such artists as Bruce Springsteen.
And then, Barbra Streisand asked Laufey to sing on her recent album of duets, performing a song Laufey wrote, “Letter to My 13-Year-Old Self.” “It’s one of those songs that I wrote just in my most intimate moments and could have been a song that I never put out,” she said. “It was a song for me to heal myself. But it’s a very hopeful song. It’s reaching back to tell your younger self that you’re going to be okay.”
Don’t you worry ’bout your curly hair
Clothes that don’t quite fit you anywhere
Voices echo in the gym
Another girl’s had her first kiss
Please don’t think too much of it, darling
I asked, “What do you think your 13-year-old self would think of all of this?”
“I think she’d be really excited,” Laufey replied. “I think she’d be really happy. There’s not a single part of myself that has changed any of my artistic interests to follow some sort of trend. And I get to make exactly the music that I loved back then. So, I think I would’ve been really, really happy.”
To hear Laufey performing “Silver Lining,” from her album “A Matter of Time,” click on the video player below:
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Story produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Steven Tyler.
The Swiss government is considering dropping the agreed purchase of the Patriot air-defence system from the United States amid severe delivery delays, Defence Minister Martin Pfister said Wednesday.
“Cancellation is always an option in the event of a delay,” he told the ATS-Keystone news agency.
Earlier Wednesday, the defence ministry announced it would continue suspending payments for the system “until the United States has firmly announced new delivery dates and payment deadlines”.
Switzerland, which is not in Nato, had ordered five Patriot systems in 2022, with delivery scheduled to begin this year and to be completed in 2028.
But last July, the government said it had been informed by the US defence department that the deliveries to Switzerland would be delayed as Washington strived to provide more support for Ukraine.
Switzerland first suspended its payments for the system last autumn.
“We are still operating on the assumption that we will receive the delivery, but we don’t know when,” Pfister said, adding that the government was mulling various options.
“A possible cancellation is one of them, but we don’t know the conditions,” he said.
Unauthorised payment
Last week, the Swiss government said the United States had circumvented the freeze on its payments for the Patriot system by dipping into Swiss payments into the same fund but intended for its purchase of a fleet of F-35A fighter jets.
This manoeuvre was authorised, head of the Swiss armaments department, Urs Loher told Swiss media.
However, “if the fund’s liquidity falls below a critical threshold, projects may be suspended or even abandoned in the event of a further decline”, the Swiss defence ministry said in Wednesday’s statement.
“This could affect not only the acquisition of the Patriot system but also the entire Swiss portfolio within the framework of the (Foreign Military Sales) programme with the United States,” it warned.
The ministry noted that Washington had said it would inform Switzerland in the coming weeks about the next steps in the operation, delivery schedules and the costs and consequences of a potential interruption.
According to its statement, a recommendation on this matter will be submitted to the government “by the end of June, 2026”.
In early March, Bern announced its intention to examine the acquisition of an additional long-range surface-to-air missile system, preferably manufactured in Europe, to complement the Patriot system.
Last month, the government also said that it now wanted to buy only 30 F-35A fighter jets, instead of the 36 ordered, after Washington last year hiked the price tag, citing high inflation and surging raw material and energy prices.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding planning has been going on in full swing – and is almost done ahead of their June 13 ceremony.
The 36-year-old pop superstar and the Kansas City Chiefs tight end, also 36, have both been actively involved in the preparations, and now they are about to make it all official.
While earlier reports suggested that the grand event would be taking place at the Eras Tour performer’s Rhode Island estate, insiders have now updated that the ceremony will be split between Swift’s mansion and a luxury resort nearby, Ocean House.
“The guest list grew, so the ceremony and private gatherings associated with the wedding [will be split between the venues]. Taylor always has a plan B and C for every scenario. They feel confident hosting it there. The entire area will be very private and guarded,” insiders told Us Weekly.
The sources near Swift divulged that the couple went over the guest list a few times and it came down to 150 people. While the wedding is not huge, it sure will be traditional.
The source told the outlet that the couple has still not sent out physical wedding invites but their friends and family all know the venue and the date.
Speaking of June 13, they said, “The wedding timeline is based on Travis’ offseason rhythm,” so that they’re able to enjoy their honeymoon without any hurry.
Swift’s dad Scott Swift will reportedly be “walking her down the aisle and all the classic touches, like the father-daughter and mother-son dances,” will be checked off the list, they added, “Taylor loves those emotional, meaningful moments, and Travis [is] on the same page.”
The Love Story hitmaker has already picked out the dress, and it is currently under final tailoring, and as for her bachelorette party, the Grammy winner “has already asked her close girlfriends, like Selena and Gigi, to sleep over at her Rhode Island home the night before the wedding.”
Although, the source maintained, both of their families have been fully supportive and hands-on with help wherever required, the couple have mostly been the ones making the calls.
The Swifts and Kelces have also been tight-lipped whenever asked about the details about the couple’s big day.
Brandy Norwood broke silence on one of the most haunting chapters of her life.
In her new memoir Phases, the singer recounted a late ’90s relationship with Boyz II Men’s Wanya Morris that began when she was just 16.
It is the time she says left scars that lasted decades.
In a week where Brandy received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the “Vocal Bible” also opened up about her past.
Her memoir Phases revisits her 2006 car accident, her feud with Monica, and, most strikingly, her teenage romance with Wanya Morris.
Brandy recalled sneaking around with Morris while touring with Boyz II Men, hiding the relationship from her parents and the public.
“I was in over my head,” she wrote.
She explained that the pair pretended to wait until her eighteenth birthday to avoid scandal.
She admitted she lost her virginity to Morris and endured comparisons to other singers including Mariah Carey before the relationship ended when Morris confessed to cheating.
“I believe he took advantage,” Brandy stated in the memoir.
Reflecting on the experience, she added, “The shame ends here. The silence ends here… I was a child. And he was an adult. And it’s time the world understood the difference.”
Morris previously claimed during a 2020 Instagram Live that he did not date Brandy until she was of age, even referencing her famous prom night with Kobe Bryant.
But Brandy’s account in Phases paints a far different picture, one she says was marked by “neon warning signs” she ignored at the time.
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