Who is Laufey? (Gen Z takes over SPAC tonight.)
PLUS: Music legend is incognito mode OG and meatloaf in the wild.
With all the talk about Cynthia Erivo cancelling and SPAC instead pulling off Jon Batiste’s album release show, a Gen Z TikTok sensation from Iceland flew a little under the radar until this week.
Unless you’re one of the 5,200 super-fans who landed a ticket — or one that didn’t.
The jazz/classical phenom from Iceland — Laufey, usually pronounced “lay-vay” in America — sold out her show tonight in an hour, SPAC President Christopher Shiley told me this week.
“It'll be the biggest show that we've done with the Philadelphia Orchestra,” he says of Saratoga’s prestigious summer residency that has featured the likes of John Legend, which seemed huge. “We're very excited about it. We still have some lawn seats for that one, but she sold out the venue almost immediately.”
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SPAC spread the word of Laufey’s appeal among its inner circles, so in addition to the 20somethings who know what to expect, there will be plenty of classical season die-hards who set phone alarms and called on time to grab their ticket. “I’d never heard of her, but I’m going,” says Joyce White, who said she’s looking forward to seeing someone so “fresh and contemporary.”
Meanwhile, Tiina Loite — her own “two i’s” hailing from the Nordic/Estonian part of the world — was the only one who told me she could pronounce Laufey’s name correctly.
Intrigued?
Here are some of the things you should know about the Icelandic star who sold out SPAC’s ampitheater in minutes and will see the overall crowds swell to more than 20,000:
Laufey is beloved on social media — she has 8.6 million followers on TikTok and 6.7 million on Instagram.
She has an identical twin sister, Junia Lin, who’s a violinist and has 2.5 million followers on TikTok. Her bio quips, “Laufey burner account.”
Laufey’s most recent collab was attending Wimbledon for British Vogue.
Her most recent single is the haunting ballad Snow White, which just came out on Thursday.
The Icelandic singer is the most-streamed jazz artist on Spotify.
Her album Bewitched boasted 5.7 streams on its first day, making it the biggest debut for a jazz album on Spotify ever.
The ‘incognito mode’ OG? Bob Dylan of course.
While I was at the Whitney last Saturday, SPAC was going off. The Willie Nelson & Family’s Outlaw Music Festival started at 4 p.m., and with none other than Bob Dylan going on at 8, a certain tireless set was planning on going straight from the track to see the “Blowin’ in the Wind” icon.
Afterwards, I expected my social media feeds to be flooded with pics and videos of the folk music legend.
Crickets.
“Bobby had his stage dark, so all anyone could see was his hat and part of his nose,” fan Joyce White, mentioned above in the Laufey piece, told me. “He had a [lit up] Bonsai tree to hide his face and also a light inside his piano to purposely mask anyone from seeing him. Many of us wore sunglasses due to the stark light against the darkened stage.”
Dylan is famous for playing remixes of his songs, making them often unrecognizable. (Click on the above video by Stark Media Pro — the only one I found — read the comments, and stay until the heralded wink at the end. Iconic.)
Meatloaf in the wild
People have been clamoring to get into Phila Street’s new Standard Fare (literally fussing with the locked door covered in brown paper), and this week some people got a sneak peek. (Grand Opening is Friday, August 15.)
I’m as open with my relationship with the owners of SF and Bocage (I do some of their marketing part-time) as I am plugged into Saratoga’s food scene — when there’s a new restaurant in town, it’s all anyone talks about. So I’d be remiss if I kept the first sneak peeks of the restaurant on everyone’s minds from you.
(Be sure to click on the videos below for a full tour.)
Enjoy!
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