Laufey has revealed that after years of performing to arenas around the world, one part of the job still unnerves her: looking an audience member directly in the eye.
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Speaking to The Hit Network’s Hot Hits with Nic & Loren, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter traced the anxiety back to her classical training.
“I grew up playing cello and I used to pick a person in the audience and accidentally stare into their eyes,” she said, recalling that a teacher once told her after a recital, “You can’t look at people directly when you’re playing, it’s creepy.” The note stuck. “So now I’m so scared of freaking people out! I’m always thinking about it,” she said.
There is one exception. Laufey said she deliberately searches the crowd for young fans during “Letter to My 13 Year Old Self,” her set closer. “It’s a letter to my younger self so I like finding the young girls in the audience and catching their eye,” she said. “But sometimes they’re crying and that makes me cry. So that’s another reason that I can’t look too closely.”
Laufey said arena shows, counterintuitively, feel more intimate to her than smaller theaters. “In an arena, I’m surrounded and feel closer to the fans. I get to do a barricade walk and feel up-close,” she said, describing the contrast between the scale of the room and the quietness of her songs as heightening the intimacy.
She also spoke about an unexpected marker of her crossover fame — being recognized for her Fortnite character. “I was at a restaurant yesterday and the waitress was like, ‘Are you the one on Fortnite?’” she said, laughing. “Sometimes I’ll come across another me and we’re just shooting at each other.”
The comments follow a landmark year for the Icelandic-Chinese artist. Her third studio album, A Matter of Time, debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 in September 2025 — her first top 10 entry on the chart and the highest-charting jazz album since 2018 — while simultaneously topping Billboard’s Jazz Albums, Traditional Jazz Albums, Independent Albums and Vinyl Albums charts.
The album went on to win Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 2026 Grammy Awards, her second consecutive win in the category after 2023’s Bewitched, which peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard 200. Laufey, who has two top 10 albums in Australia, recently wrapped an eight-show Australian tour behind the record.
