Laufey

TikTok gives an artist a voice. I'm very careful to be very authentic on there - everything I do comes from me, nobody ever tells me to make TikToks. I do everything on my own, and all the language is my own. And I wouldn't do it if someone was telling me to do it! It has to come from the heart, but I think it can give artists their own voice.

I went to Berklee for college: a good musical training ground, but there's no direct line between that and the music industry.

What TikTok and social media did for me was give me an even chance to pitch myself to the world. And for that, I can't take it for granted.

I have to live to write. But I try to discipline myself into writing on the spot as well. I think it's a misconception that you just have to wait for inspiration to strike you. I think musicians and writers can train themselves to see inspiration on the spot. And that's one of the greatest tools you can develop as a songwriter.

I took classical music very seriously as a kid.

As a kid, I was running around the conservatory, playing with my grandparents' students who were like babysitters, taking cello and piano lessons, eating good food, and making sure I didn't completely forget my Chinese every summer.

I've almost had to prove myself to Icelandic people. Living in such an isolated space, it gives you this innate sense of wanderlust, and dreaming for something much bigger.

I'm just going to keep making the music I want and hope that it reaches as many ears as possible.

When I started out, people were always asking me, 'Who do you want to be like?' I had no idea what to say.

Sometimes you put a song on TikTok and it does well because it's visually stimulating or it has a hooky lyric, but it won't go past that.

My mom could tell that I had a natural inclination for music.

I'm very confident in my music.

With the kind of music I make, I make very individualistic choices.

I love Scandinavian brands from growing up in Iceland.

I write the best when I'm sitting on my couch.

I would say I take a lot of inspiration from jazz and I borrow a lot of principles from it and classical music. Both of those genres are rigid, and I've broken so many rules - I don't improvise the way a lot of jazz musicians do, and a lot of the chord progressions I use don't technically make sense.

My whole life has been in classical music, I've been trained to become the best musician possible, play the piece the best, play the notes on the page the best.

Obviously, I want to be taken seriously as a musician.

Growing up in Iceland, it was very beautiful, very safe, but quite isolated. There was something about jazz music that had a way of transporting me to a different time and place; it was a form of escape.

Most of my heroes exist in the past, so I don't get a chance to hang out with them.