Nothing about Laufey’s musical journey has been conventional. Perhaps the biggest example of that was becoming an “overnight” sensation during the pandemic while posting videos of herself singing her own original music intermixed with some beloved covers. The reaction got Laufey’s attention, and she decided to release an EP without going through the conventional channels of a record label. Titled Typical of Me, the seven-track offering quickly rose up the charts of her “niche” genre, including in the US (climbing all the way to number two on Billboard’s Traditional Jazz Albums and Jazz Albums charts). An impressive feat for a relative unknown who self-published the record. Something that one of Laufey’s obvious influences, Taylor Swift, might have wished she had done instead of signing with Big Machine Records, thus owning all of her masters from the start.
But then, Swift has always been about the conventional channels for success, complete with sacrificing a college education in favor of putting all her efforts into becoming a teenage country singer. Laufey wasn’t willing to play that game. In fact, despite her own early prosperity on singing competition shows like Ísland Got Talent and The Voice Iceland, she opted to attend Berklee College of Music. And yes, she chose to finish her degree even after realizing the career potential of her virality. So it was that she graduated in 2021, a year after her brush with internet fame.
Throughout everything, Laufey can still maintain, as she did to CBS Sunday Morning’s Tracy Smith, “There’s not a single part of myself that has changed my artistic interests to follow some sort of trend.” Which is exactly how Laufey has arrived at an album that is as comfortable in her musical skin as ever. As her third record, A Matter of Time perfects what Everything I Know About Love (2022) and Bewitched (2023) established. Only this time, it’s true that Laufey really is 1) telling you everything she knows about love, having ostensibly experienced it for the first time while in the process of recording the album and 2) she really is bewitched by another: “mere mortal” Charlie Christie. At least, that’s the speculation with the most heat at present, with Laufey neither confirming nor denying the rumors. Such is her belief in separating her personal and professional life.
And yet, the personal so clearly bleeds into the professional as a result of her music. And A Matter of Time is perhaps the pinnacle of that reality thus far. Opening with, as an album with this title should, “Clockwork,” Laufey instantly sets the tone for her lovestruck aura on this album. Except, on this particular track, she discusses the unique stress of falling in love when it’s with a friend, singing, “Swore I’d never do this again/Think that I’m so clever I could date a friend.” For, as Vickie Miner (Janeane Garofalo) in Reality Bites, once said, “Sex is the quickest way to ruin a friendship.” Whether or not Laufey’s new love started out as a friend, she certainly seems to know a lot about “the transition” as she continues, “He just called me, said he’s runnin’ late/Like me, he probably had to regurgitate [one of the sickest—pun intended—rhymes in recent memory]/I know it’s irrational, at least I’m self-aware/I’m shivering, maybe I’ll stay home/‘Oh shit, he’s here!’”
Once Laufey surrenders to the date, awkwardness or not, she realizes, “I think I might be loving this romantic night/Damn, he’s smiling, staring back at me/We’re at the arcade, think it’s going perfectly/I know I’m dramatic, but I caved in at his touch/I want him forever, oh my God, I’ve said too much.” Appropriately, Laufey originally teased the song on TikTok—an entity her fans are far more familiar with than an analogue clock that makes the “tick tock” sound, like clockwork. As for Laufey’s concluding admission, “But good God, I think he fell in love/Tick tock, and I fell in love too/Like clockwork, I fell in love with you,” it leads quite seamlessly into the sentiments of “Lover Girl,” the third single from A Matter of Time.
As a song that explores what happens “after the fall(ing in love),” Laufey is a combination of self-deprecation (“Lovestruck girl, I’d tease her/Thought I’d never be her”) and a puddle of mush (“I can’t wait another day to see you”). Ruing the day she ever “allowed” herself to become a “lover girl.” Of course, it’s not something one can stop once they’ve been hit with Cupid’s arrow (though, if you’re MARINA, you prefer to turn the tables on Cupid). Something Laufey apparently didn’t learn until now, in her mid-twenties. This “late bloomer” energy speaking to the old soul she ostensibly embodies. Along with the clear influence of Old Hollywood movies on the whimsy and romance of the worlds she creates in her songs. Indeed, Laufey is a self-proclaimed lover of Golden Age Hollywood musicals (e.g., Carousel, Oklahoma!, An American in Paris and The Sound of Music), something that shines through in a track like “Lover Girl.”
However, if “Lover Girl” is all exuberance and butterflies, Laufey’s aim appears to be to gut-punch her listeners with the tonal shift on “Snow White” (because Cinderella isn’t the only fairy tale heroine reference here) an instant classic in the annals of songs about beauty (or, more specifically, the pressures and impossible expectations on women to “look hot”). Speaking on this topic (still much more pertinent to women than men) also serves as an apropos segue into a song like “Castle in Hollywood,” which explores and dissects the end of a friendship between two women. Undeniably, it’s rare to come across a song like this in pop music, with most female musicians focusing only on their breakups with men. But here, Laufey acknowledges, as she told Rolling Stone, “Most women I know of had a friend breakup that’s just as bad, if not worse than, a romantic breakup. Women have such a strong, deep empathy that it makes friend breakups, especially female friendships, really hard sometimes. It’s a whole lot harder to be like ‘fuck you’ to another woman who’s changed your life in some way. I wish them the best, but I’m also messed up for life because of it.”
This comes across in the heart-wrenching chorus, “I think about you always/Tied together with a string [more Folklore-era Taylorisms, which tracks since this song is produced by Aaron Dessner, who alternated on song production with Laufey’s usual go-to, Spencer Stewart]/I thought that lilies died by winter, then they bloomed again in spring/It’s a heartbreak/Marked the end of our girlhood/We’ll never go back to our castle in Hollywood.” The implication in that last line being that all the shine has worn off their “fairy tale/happily ever after” friendship. For any girl who’s ever lost a friend they held dear (whether in their formative years or otherwise), this song is sure to resonate. However, despite this being an elegy for a friendship lost, Laufey still finds a way to bring up her new love when she says, “I’m dating the boy that we dreamеd of/I wish I could tell him about us/I wish I could tell you how I finally fell in lovе.”
Alas, falling in love is hardly the cure for all of Laufey’s ills, as she makes clear on “Carousel” (named, no doubt, in honor of that Hollywood musical she loves so much). The song being, for all intents and purposes, Laufey’s take on Lorde’s “Liability.” That much becomes immediately apparent when she opens the song with the line, “My life is a circus/Hold on for all I bring with me.” This belief that she’s caught in a circus (said in a way that isn’t as triumphant as Britney Spears on “Circus” singing, “All eyes on me in the center of the ring just like a circus”) was further cemented on CBS Sunday Morning when she admitted, “I was always a little bit, like, felt a little bit like a circus act.” In other words, like some kind of “freak.” In meeting this new love of hers, Laufey is accordingly terrified to lose him, confessing, “You make me nervous/Take my sincere apology/For all of my oddities/My recurring comedies/I know I’m on a/Carousel spinning around/Floating up and down.” She then adds, “Such a spectacle/You signed up for one hell of a/One-man show/Tangled in ribbons/A lifelong role/Aren’t you sorry that you fell/Onto this carousel?”
If he’s a “stand-up guy” (like Lana Del Rey thinks Jeremy Dufrene is), then surely he won’t mind. Even so, Laufey can’t help but think, “I’m waiting for you to see/The things that are wrong with me/Before you’re on my/Carousel spinning around/Floating up and down/Nowhere to go.” Fortunately, the “Silver Lining” is that, whoever this guy is, he does get on the carousel, going round and round with Laufey to the point where she declares on her lead single, “When I go to hell, I’ll go there with you too.” That’s it. That’s the silver lining. Because a girl has to take what she can get when it comes to “ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate-ing the positive,” as Bing and the Andrews Sisters would remind.
However, it’s difficult to do that on “Too Little, Too Late,” which is uniquely told from a male perspective (ha! something Taylor hasn’t done in a song yet). And, evidently, Laufey seems to think that men are just as emotional and romantic as women when it comes to “the one that got away.” Accordingly, there’s a palpable tension throughout the song, like this man (as created by Laufey) might burst at the seams with his sense of regret. As Laufey told Rolling Stone, “I wanted [the sound] to be tense the whole time. No distinct chorus, no distinct verse, just a constant uphill and then for it to bang out into a wedding scene. It’s so dramatic.” That it is, concluding with the emotionally eviscerating verse, “I’ll toast outside your wedding day/Whisper vows I’ll never say to you/‘Cause it’s too little, all too late.” Indubitably, it has the ring of Swift tune. But Laufey’s got her own unique stamp, and, after such intense drama, the whimsy of “Cuckoo Ballet (Interlude)” is not only another mark of her uniqueness, but also a much-needed reprieve from the intensity of “Too Little, Too Late.” What’s more, it’s not just some “throwaway” interlude, clocking in at three minutes and forty seconds. At times, sounding like a mashup of instrumentation out of The Nutcracker-meets-one of Laufey’s favorite Old Hollywood musicals, there’s nods to several Laufey songs, including an instrumental of “Lover Girl” (think: “Lover Girl Reprise” or “Lover Girl, Bridgerton Edition”).
The dazzling and, at times, bittersweet interlude leads into the even more dazzling and bittersweet “Forget-Me-Not,” an ode to Laufey’s home country of Iceland (now, thanks to her, no longer only associated with Björk). Hence, her decision to record the track in Iceland with the Iceland Symphony. The latter’s contribution lending an even greater emotional depth to the chorus, during which Laufey laments, “Love you forever, don’t let go of me/I left my own homeland to chase reverie/Gleymdu mér aldrei þó ég héðan flýg/Gleymdu mér aldrei, elskan mín.” Those final two lines translating from Icelandic to: “Never forget me even if I fly away from here/Never forget me, my love.”
Elsewhere, she describes the type of landscape that not everyone would necessarily be “enticed” by…unless they grew up with it: “I miss the wind, stone cold kiss on my cheeks/Bends in your body, the hope of your spring/Millions now hear my soliloquy/I’m still that child on a black sand beach” (and now, so is Addison Rae in the “Headphones On” video). To be sure, Laufey sings of her homeland as though she’s singing to a lover she had to leave behind, admitting as much to Rolling Stone when she said, “This song sounds like a love letter to a guy.”
But what doesn’t sound like that at all is the track that follows, “Tough Luck” (which served as the second single from the album). Combining the songwriting styles and tones of Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, Laufey lays into this ex about all of his own shortcomings despite him being the one to try making her feel inadequate the entire time. But no, Laufey isn’t having it, confidently giving it right back when she declares, “You think you’re so misunderstood/The black cat of your neighborhood/Tough luck, my boy, your time is up/I’ll break it first, I’ve had enough/Of waiting ‘til you lie and cheat/Just like you did to the actress before me/Oops, she doesn’t even know/You won’t be missed, I’m glad to see you go.”
Alas, despite all her cool, “I’m so over you” posturing, “A Cautionary Tale” is yet another track that indicates she’s just a heart-on-her-sleeve-wearing fool who can’t let go. “Born to be a giver [much like Chappell Roan]/Destined to pay the toll,” Laufey tries to use her own sad story as a cautionary tale to whoever is listening and might find themselves falling prey to l’amour. Even if, by Laufey’s own account, A Matter of Time is “about opening yourself up to a lover, or a person, or the entire world, giving them every single part of yourself.” Even if you know the extreme risk involved in making yourself so vulnerable. Only to regret it when another person (inevitably) disappoints you, as Laufey analyzes in the chorus, “I gave it too much, I gave myself up/I lost sight of all my dignity/I’ve always been smart, my chameleon heart/Took your draining personality and gave it to me/I wanted to please you, this performance of a lifetime/My heart to you handed, you took it for granted/And made me the villain.” Or, as Taylor would say, “I don’t like your little games/Don’t like your tilted stage/The role you made me play/Of the fool, no, I don’t like you.”
However, Laufey switches back to Rodrigo-style lyrics when she mourns, “And I can’t fix you, God, I tried, the hourglass I shattered just in time.” Yet another evocative image that brings to mind a now antiquated timepiece. After all, A Matter of Time is all about the clock running out. Which is why it makes plenty of sense that Laufey would describe the tone of the record as “that moment when Cinderella finds out it’s struck midnight and she’s running.” As for the whole “midnights” and clock thing being “already done” by Taylor with, what else, Midnights (complete with a Cinderella-themed video for “Bejeweled”), it’s really Kylie Minogue that Laufey appears to be borrowing from the most via her album cover, which looks ever so much like the cover of Minogue’s greatest hits album, Step Back in Time: The Definitive Collection (including the way Minogue, too, is posed like her legs are the hands of the clock).
But, with the next song, “Mr. Eclectic” (not to be confused with Taylor’s “Mr. Perfectly Fine”) Laufey is not only “borrowing” from Sabrina Carpenter, but also herself, with an opening that mirrors the tempo and bossa nova stylings of “Lover Girl,” and a theme that echoes the shade-throwing of “Tough Luck.” As for the Carpenter comparison, it’s all in lyrics that smack of Short n’ Sweet’s “Dumb & Poetic,” particularly when SC sings, “Try to come off like you’re soft and well-spoken/Jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen.” Laufey feels the same about “Mr. Eclectic,” of whom she accuses, “Bet you think you’re so poetic/Quoting epics and ancient prose/Truth be told, you’re quite pathetic/Mister Eclectic Allan Poe.” In another Short n’ Sweet kind of moment (specifically, on “Slim Pickins,” when Carpenter bemoans, “This boy doesn’t even know/The difference between ‘there,’ ‘their’ and ‘they are’/Yet he’s naked in my room”), Laufey berates, “Did you еver stop and give a wonder to/Who just who you wеre talking to?/The very expert on the foolish things/That men have said to woo and win me over/What a poser, you think you’re so interesting.”
Having purged herself of such “toxic types,” Laufey can finally breathe some proverbial “Clean Air.” This being the metaphor she wields on the penultimate track of the digital version of the album (with the vinyl version also including a bonus track of Laufey’s cover of “Seems Like Old Times”). With its sparse guitar strings that gradually transition into a country-like rhythm, Laufey happily—even chirpily—announces, “My soul has suffered, get the fuck out of my atmosphere/I’m breathing clean, clean air.” It’s a lot like Britney Spears’ own purging of a toxic boyfriend-turned-ex (in her case, it retroactively sounds directed at Justin Timberlake), telling him on her 2001 track, “Cinderella,” “I’m sorry, just trying to live my life/Don’t worry, you’re gonna be alright/But Cinderella’s got to go.” This doesn’t refer to the scene of “Cindy” running away from the prince when the clock strikes midnight, but rather, telling her now ex that she can no longer be the subservient, docile woman he counted on and took for granted for so long. She’s freeing herself of that burden, as Laufey is on many occasions throughout A Matter of Time.
But it’s with “Sabotage,” the poignant slow jam of a denouement, that Laufey cuts to the core of her relationship issues. And, more often than not, they have to do with how, as she self-criticizes, “I get in my head so easily I don’t understand, I’m my worst enemy/You assure me you love me and seal it with a kiss/I can’t be convinced.” In this sense, the song obviously should have been called “Self-Sabotage.” Echoing the lyrical motifs and fears expressed on “Carousel,” Laufey takes her phobia of ruining a perfectly good relationship to the next level by warning her lover, “It’s just a matter of time ‘til you see the dagger/It’s a special of mine to cause disaster/So prepare for the impact, and brace your heart/For cold, bloody, bitter sabotage” (in Taylor speak, that translates to, “Combat, I’m ready for combat/I say I don’t want that, but what if I do?…/ I’ve been the archer, I’ve been the prey/Who could ever leave me, darling?/But who could stay?). The sweeping, trippy musical outro then mimics something out of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, complete with the abrupt stopping point in the instrumentation. A jarring cut, as though the clock has run out.
And, to that end, the title of the album has a two-pronged meaning. On the one (clock) hand, it’s just a matter of time before you fall in love. On the other, it’s just a matter of time before the clock starts running out on the romance (or, to quote Lana Del Rey, “You and I/We were born to die”). The overall positive side of it (because “you’ve got to ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the positive/E-lim-i-nate the negative”), though, is that at least Laufey is teaching younger generations how a clock actually works.
Genna Rivieccio
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