Laufey

0:06Pushkin. This is an iHeart Podcast. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest. And they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

0:48where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Traveling is one of life's greatest joys. Honestly, can anything be more exhilarating? Well, actually, yeah, with Chase Sapphire Reserve. It's your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations. First, you will earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel. And the card gets you into Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences. Whether you are booking a once-in-a-lifetime trip or your next weekend escape, discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve.

1:35Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval, terms apply. As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24-7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. Here's how it works. First, post your job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights.

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3:04Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash gladwell-fake. That's linkedin.com slash gladwell-fake to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Leve's fast rise to fame is a pandemic success story. During lockdown, the 24-year-old multi-instrumentalist built a substantial following on social media where she was known as Jazz Girl. Since then, the Icelandic Chinese singer-songwriter has released two studio albums that blend classical, pop, and jazz perfectly. And while working in the style of artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Chet Baker may seem unlikely for a Gen Z artist, her music has proved to resonate deeply with young audiences.

4:01The first single from her most recent release, Bewitched, has been streamed over 20 million times globally since its release a couple months back. And the album itself was the largest jazz debut on Spotify ever. Leve's online performances first went viral in 2020 while she was attending Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music. Raised in Iceland, Leve started playing cello and classical piano when she was just four years old. By 15, she was performing with the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra as a cello soloist. The Chinese side of her family has been studying classical music for generations.

4:36Lei Wei's mom is a professional violinist, and her maternal grandfather taught violin at China's Central Conservatory of Music. And while Lei Wei's classical training runs deep, perhaps the most surprising thing about her ascent to stardom is the fact that she's now known as a singer-songwriter as much as a musician. On today's episode, I talk to Lei Wei about how she started singing jazz standards online and what inspired her to write her own songs as well. She also talks about the great sacrifices her Chinese family made during the Cultural Revolution when there was a strict ban on playing classical Western music.

5:11And she sings two original songs for us, including her single, From the Start. This is Broken Record. Line of notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richman. Before we jump into my interview with Lei Ve, let's hear her sing an acoustic rendition of her song, From the Start, live.

5:35Don't you notice how I get quiet when there's no one else around Me and you and awkward silence Don't you dare look at me that way I don't need reminders of how you don't feel the same Oh, the burning pain Listening to you harp on balsam New soulmate She's so perfect, blah, blah, blah Oh, how I wish you'd wake up one day Run to me, confess your love At least just let me say That when I talk to you A Cupid walks right through and shoots a narrow through my heart. And I sound like a loon, but don't you feel it to confess? I've loved you from the start. I love that I sound like a loon line. Such a great play on words.

6:55It's a fun word, yeah. In such little time, you've gotten so successful. I feel I can confidently say that. I should mention, I mean, your album was like the highest debuting jazz album, dare I say, on Spotify. You know, if you just want to limit it to jazz. It was so, so, so wild. It was very, you know, I would have never expected that that could be the outcome for the kind of music that I make. I really set out to just make the music that I loved and hope that people would listen. And the fact that they have is very, very special. I kind of can't believe it. I might go all over the place just because you're a relatively new artist.

7:39I don't know a ton about you. And you're route to this place now. It's circuitous. It's confusing where you came from before LA. I have a lot to say. There's many stops. I have a lot to say. How long have you been in LA now? A little over two years. And you came to LA from? It's kind of confusing, but DC kind of, because my parents lived in DC while I went to Berkeley. And then because Berkeley - So they moved to the States to be - Yeah, you know, it just was coincidental actually, because my dad worked in DC, like between Iceland and DC. When my kids go to college, I'll also accidentally have some work to do nearby.

8:21Honestly, it was so nice. it was so nice because then what happened is covid struck right so instead of going back to iceland where i would have you know otherwise gone i went to dc so i stayed in the states and you know had employment authorization and stuff like that so it was like actually quite integral to me being able to start this career during that time i think so how much of berkeley did you do remote like from dc i mean after i did one and a half year in person and then and then the rest online wow but i did graduate congratulations thank you that's no small it's uh no it's just it's a rare one it's not considered very cool to graduate but wow no i know some cool people though that are graduating from berkeley yeah yeah some of us make it all look at you you you're setting a new tone for yeah you know the standard is that if you dropped out you made it if you if you uh if you graduated you won't make it i'm always curious about the berkeley experience because it's such a unique school with such unique very driven students for one you know what i mean i feel like students who very much want to they want it they want it and they want it like not you know i feel like if you go to a traditional four-year institution where it's it's much more where it's focused on academics right there's a sense of like you know might take a while to get into your profession you might take a detour through graduate school exactly or whatever you know and you know i know like with berkeley kids it's like to your point they want to make it before they even graduate so that's the amount of pressure it is and i think strangely i didn't put that pressure on myself because i came from such an academic background and my twin sister went to like a four-year university in scotland that was very much not like a music school so i was almost on that path i think i was different from a lot of kids at Berklee in that I came there quite open-minded and curious about what it was that I was able to do within the walls of Berklee.

10:23Because I came in as a cellist, right? Like I was on a scholarship to play cello. I didn't go as a singer or a writer or anything like that. And I kind of was like, okay, I want to do a little bit of everything and see what I can do. And part of me just felt like it was so unrealistic to become a singer that I just didn't even, you know, dip too much into it. So sit your track with cello, but you also want to pursue singing and writing or you're curious It's about dabbling and singing. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I wanted to be a singer the most, but it just felt very unrealistic, which is funny.

10:52Because it wasn't anything you've done, really? Growing up in Iceland, it's not something you see that often, you know, you're not immersed in that. And like, yeah, I don't know. I think I also liked to play it safe as a kid. Right. And I didn't want to, I was a little bit scared of dreaming outside of the box, if you will. And I was like, who am I to, to think that I can do that? You know, I was also taught to like, I've come from my mother's Chinese and, you know, the Chinese kind of my Chinese culture and background has definitely taught me like you have to manage expectations, stay humble, work very hard.

11:25Like those are the three kind of pillars. Manage expectations, stay humble, work really hard. Yeah, exactly. Like obviously like dream, strive for big things, but like in a very realistic way, in a way that you work your way up to it, you know. whereas like I think the American dream is like a little bit more delusional but in a really good way do you know what I mean and now I've tapped countries based on delusion it's all delusional I've tapped into that delusion now but I think you know that's that's you know I mean in many in many ways whether it be a good thing or a bad thing I think that's why a lot of Americans succeed in really fantastic ways again whether it be good or bad because it's also why we like fail spectacularly, even after having succeeded spectacularly.

12:10I mean, you know, big, big wins and big losses come from big risks and Americans and American kids are taught to take big risks. I think a lot of my, not even my parents, I think I was just a very safe and calculated child. So I didn't dare to take big risks. But now I take really big risks. That's great. Even doubt. What was your first encounter with American culture as a delusional? As a delusional. I mean, I went to elementary school in the States from ages six to nine. That was like the first time I remember encountering American culture. Do you remember how you felt before you got here? Like being told you're going to come here and just sort of your feelings?

12:48Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I was five years old, so I wasn't thinking too much about it. I think I was excited to get to move to a new country. I mean, I didn't speak English very well or at all. So I remember Icelandic and Chinese. I remember just how encouraged we were to speak up, like public speaking. There was an emphasis on that, even from, you know, age six in my, you know, public school in DC. It was a lot of like show and tell, sharing, you know, reading out loud, stuff like that from a very early age that I didn't feel like there was as much of an emphasis on. and I think what resulted was like kids were quite open and they were which was great for me coming from a different country especially I mean I lived in Washington DC and though it was like a public school it was very international just because the nature of the neighborhood I lived in there were a lot of like children who had parents who worked in you know international service so because these kids were very international and because they were very outspoken I think they accepted kids quite easily.

13:56So that was actually really good. But I remember just always thinking, you know, Americans and American culture was quite extroverted compared to a more introverted Icelandic culture. And I knew that from a very young age. It seems like you enjoyed it. Was it uncomfortable to start? No, not at all. And I think, you know, six to nine, which is the time that I lived in America as a kid, there's such formative years and they taught me to become very expressive. And I think when I took that expression, like that expressive nature back to Iceland when I was like nine, eight or nine in the middle of the recession in 2008, I felt quite loud.

14:36I quite felt really larger than life, like really big. And that was kind of something that I dealt with for a while in Iceland. What about at home? Was it encouraged at home to be sort of living out loud? Yeah, absolutely. My parents were super, super encouraging of me being an artist as well from a very young age. But I had a very disciplined childhood, not in a bad way, but in that I knew I came home from school and I was treading a pre-professional classical music path. And that's because your mom. My mom is a classical violinist, yeah. So from age four, I started playing classical piano and cello, and it just kind of became a part of life just as going to elementary school becomes a part of your life.

15:23You know, you go to math, you go to English, you go to science, you come home, you have an hour of piano, hour of cello. An hour of piano, hour of cello before even an hour of homework? Yes, before homework. Yeah. But in Iceland, there isn't much homework. That's nice. Very nice. Yeah. I wish that were the case here. Yeah, you know, I would say that the nature of schooling in Iceland is a lot more relaxed. And, you know, there's no private school. Everyone goes to the public schools. There's no, you know, the kind of hierarchy of schools that has been set up in the States that, you know, follows you all the way down to college.

15:57You know, like people thinking about how they can set themselves up to get to a good university from the age of like six or seven. That mentality just doesn't really exist in Iceland. Is there a big class dichotomy there? No. No. No, I would say, I mean, of course, like everywhere, you know, there's, but the wealth gap in Iceland is generally, compared to other countries, quite small. Wow. And it's a social democratic country and it's, you know, follows kind of Scandinavian principles and, you know, you have free healthcare and education are very, very low cost, which is, you know, nice. It's great that you got to bounce between.

16:37Yeah, I've definitely experienced both. And, you know, I spent every summer in China as well growing up. So I have another extreme. I was in China just a couple of days ago. I was there for 10 days playing a bit, but it was my first time back since COVID. And it was nice to revisit that as the adult that I've become since. How was it? What was that? And do you sell family there? Yes. My grandmother lives there. She was a professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. And my grandfather was as well, who's now passed. So the classical music roots run quite deep. But yeah, she was there.

17:14And I played with the China Philharmonic in Beijing. And I think it was very special for her to see that. And actually, my grandfather was a violin professor. And a lot of his students were in the orchestra. And it was a fun, full circle moment. When did your grandfather pass? 2009. so you were young quite a while ago yeah quite young did you get to talk to his former students about him at all yes absolutely and i remember him very vividly he was like a larger than life person i've actually been told that that i resemble him in many ways which is you know such an honor and you know he really loved music so much and and he loved jazz music as well and and loved like musical theater.

17:55So I kind of, you know, his idea of music was, it was just such a musical thing, right? You know, I feel like you can split music into two kind of things. In my head, at least, it's like you have the technique and you have the musicality. If you have both, you're stellar. I definitely lean musical. Like, I mean, I've definitely, you know, worked up a foundation of technique but i was never that good at practicing and i definitely leaned in onto the fact that i on onto the musicality that you had like an ear and yeah yeah that had the ear and a feel for things exactly kind of the stuff that you don't need to practice as much you know to a metronome to a literal metronome but that was always my failing i could never i never practiced i hated practicing to a metronome so i was always told my timing oh my god to this day the sound of a metronome like triggers me like i get like a physical reaction to a metronome which is great now because you know i sing to click sometimes which i didn't even know was a thing until two years ago maybe when i started working in music it like bewildered me so much that like on stage there would be like a constant metronome in my ear it's funny do you do it in studio too when you're recording rarely sometimes but i try i always try without click before i do it with click.

19:15Yeah, I would imagine if it triggers you that much. Well, I think, you know, I've earned it that I can kind of just let the music live. But yeah, of course, sometimes I need to be, you know, pushed into place by a click. Yeah, sure enough. We have to take a quick break, and then we'll come back with more of my interview with Levy. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Oocla Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

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20:43where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. The greatest music stories aren't always in the songs themselves. They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions. Whether you're wondering about the connections between different scenes, trying to understand what drove a particular creative period, or exploring how social movements influenced sound, Claude works through these complex cultural puzzles with you.

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23:12Terms apply. We're back with more from Le 'Ve. I know certainly mid-century Russia, for instance, would have, and, you know, Cuba, rock and roll would have been outlawed. I don't know if jazz was the same, but it certainly would have been hard to get a hold of jazz records and things I'd imagine, right? Oh my goodness. Yeah. I mean, well, in the 60s and 70s in China, you know, there was a cultural revolution. So Mao and the Communist Party, they basically, you know, outlawed any type of foreign influence and Western influence. And there was just kind of like a grand scale focus on all things, just Chinese, like looking within.

24:00so my grandparents who who were professors at the central conservatory of western classical music that was considered you know the bourgeoisie so they actually went to re-education camp and and lived in the countryside for a while and were like rice farmers and whatnot and my mom grew up in a boarding school because of that and and they couldn't play any western classical music no western music at all and it like it goes so far i've heard the craziest stories from that time But yeah, my mother kind of grew up in that world and my grandparents also went through that. I mean, my mother, even like down to the clothes that you wore, you couldn't wear any, you couldn't wear bell-bottom jeans or anything, which was, you know, in style at that time in the Western world.

24:46My grandmother naturally has curly hair, which is very, very rare in China. And the communists thought that she had permed her hair, which was, you know, Western influence. So she had to put her hair up in a silk scarf every day for years. Really wild. And none of them played music for the longest time, or at least the, you know, the classical music that they were trained in. How did your mom end up back playing? Well, I mean, she always, she played violin. She just couldn't play. you know it had to be Chinese music got it I think you know my mother was just so in that world that she you know that that was the only path she could tread and I think that's why my mother so emphasized kind of me and my sister's freedom to do whatever we wanted and become whatever kind of artists we wanted and because it was sort of so because it was so strict as she was growing up and she didn't really have that freedom of choice and so she actually just kind of let us do whatever you want.

25:42I like that an hour of practice immediately after school is much more lenient than whatever she encountered. Oh my God, definitely. I mean, the way that my, I'm so thankful for that because I'm still running off of that technique to this day. Do you still practice? No, not nearly as much as I did as a kid, but you know, the hard work that I put in as a kid is still paying off today because when I'm like on strenuous touring schedules or recording for hours on end, you know, the stamina that I've gotten from all of those years of practicing and kind of the focus that I've gotten, those skills still are lasting me at this age, which is really, really great.

26:19But, you know, I think that's another reason I really love the fact that I live in a time where I can mix so many genres together, you know, like they couldn't do anything of the sort. And I'm just like, oh, I'm going to mix jazz and pop and classical together and present it however I want. And the fact that we have that freedom now is wild. I mean, it wasn't so long ago that my grandparents and my mother couldn't play even classical music. I am so glad that you're doing it too. You know, it feels like we go back to, in American culture, in Western culture, we do go back a lot, but I feel like an era we haven't revisited in a long time is sort of that mid-century jazz, that musical world that existed then.

27:06And it's so ripe for reimagining because it's so expressive. It's so emotional. It's so musically sound. And even the opening of your record, that sounds both like modern production and like old production simultaneously. And I think that's kind of like the brilliance of certain people your age, some of your cohorts, I guess we would say, who are sort of doing that, you know, mixing these things up. Yeah, thank you so much. I mean, that's kind of, that's definitely the goal to kind of hark back to that time. And I think that's the music I've just always loved so much. And when I started singing, I immediately started singing jazz standards.

27:42And like Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday and Chet Baker were, and then also on top of that, like the songs from Golden Age films were the only music I really listened to. like there's no other music I could make like that's the music I wanted to make so much that you know whether it worked out or not I was going to continue doing it you know but I also did find there was especially when I started out and I was just posting like little videos of me singing jazz standards online I found that there was such a gap for this generation no one was really doing it but nobody seemed to really dislike the music that much like it's the the bones of the music is so good right these jazz standards there's just good songs that have lasted for so long and have been honestly like have been sampled so many times and jazz is kind of like the root of all modern music right it's something that is so prevalent in pop music and hip-hop and r &b so actually like down to into your point of it being the backbone because i think most people think of like the blues as being the backbone but really coming out of the big band era like bebop groups taking it down to like the bare essentials of might be a trio or might be a quartet i mean that's rock and roll it's like three or four or five people it's all it's all connected and and so i think you know i tend to think the gen z ear is actually really trained well for jazz music and we've been like subconsciously fed it for many many years so i also think that the timing of music now is like this new audience of music listeners they don't really care what the music you know what era it resembles if anything if it resembles another era like you're hearing these huge resurgences in like 90s rock sound punk rock honestly like every 70s music like Fleetwood Mac had a big moment on TikTok recently during the exactly it's like all music is coming back I think what Gen Z cares about is connecting to the artist connecting to the lyrics connecting to the story and jazz is really good storytelling I think it's really good storytelling.

29:46So yeah, it's fun that we live in a time where we can mix so many genres together and kind of make it our own. How did it come to be that standards ended up being the first thing that you were singing? Like, did you encounter them through film or through some radio station in Iceland? No, well, my father loved jazz music. So he played a lot of jazz music in the house. And, you know, as a kid, I listened to pretty much only classical music. And then I really liked, you know, obviously like the other kids of that time when I was like seven or eight, I loved like Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus and whatever.

30:15But I couldn't hear any of myself in those singers. I've always had quite a deep voice. And when I started singing, I just immediately started, I think the first song I remember learning and performing at a singing show was Singing in the Rain. And then I just naturally, I just listened to so much Ella Fitzgerald. I just kind of started singing all the songs that she had in her repertoire, which kind of ended up being just the great american songbook ella talk about the the sort of the spectrum of technique and feel yeah i mean she has it all both in space like who has both of those things both you're stellar and she is the the epitome of that yeah it's like few people like her stevie wonders another who exactly hear it less but with ella it's more obvious that she has the technique exactly yeah it's true musicianship and i think coming from a classical music background i recognize that within her performing and and also just growing up a cellist like she sounds like a cello she sings like a cello in what way her voice like the timbre of it and the vibrato the approach the legato it's very cellistic interesting you have to listen for that yeah it's like so obvious once you think about it i've been on an ella kick recently and just trying yeah just because just because she's so good and I haven't listened in a while and honestly we named my youngest daughter we named her after Ella Fitzgerald and she's just starting to get into music so I think I say it just randomly but it's probably because I'm trying to like subconsciously get her into you know because she's messing around the piano and singing and stuff so I'm like I'm hoping she goes that direction but yeah just you know I'm not a great pianist by any measure but I love just messing around and it's like you can learn a lot about it mess around so much you can learn so much by messing around I mean nothing I do within the jazz world aside from the singing portion but I came from a classical piano background right so I was very I was conditioned to do what the page told me to do what the music told me to do and then when I started singing jazz and I wanted to accompany myself I started just like slowly learning the chords and I'm by no means a jazz pianist so like what I do is not maybe based in the most of technique it's more based on feel which took me a really long time to kind of allow myself to do like in my I think in my first recordings I was like a little bit embarrassed to play because I was like I'm not a jazz pianist like but when the first jazz pianist came about they weren't jazz pianists either they were just messing around as well so they were and they so many so many of the greats who even became like great in terms of technique and are revered for technique they came from playing other styles you know exactly and just by circumstance that they had to record and jazz or play with the jazz group or something and they picked it up and learned it over well that's how yeah i was reading a bill evans biography the other day actually and like he started out as a classical pianist and then just like kind of started noodling his way in and learning about it and i was very inspired i was like i should do that but um i'm a huge bill Evans fan.

33:24And it made a lot of sense because I can hear a lot of like classical technique and ideas. You know, it's very based in technique. But yeah, it's so cool. I mean, my life as a musician and my musicianship got a whole lot better when I allowed myself to mess around and make mistakes. It's pretty obvious how like the Bill Evans and the L. Fitzgeralds of the world like influence your sound and your music and your feel for things. Less obvious is, I guess, like the Taylor Swift side of things, which I guess you grew up listening to as well. Absolutely. But I'm wondering if that's more in the approach to yourself as an artist.