Laufey A Matter of Time: The Final Hour

With A Matter of Time, Laufey secured her second Grammy win earlier this year for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album—though there has been nothing traditional about Laufey’s approach to music or fame. For, on the one hand, Laufey seemed to be devoting herself to “the craft” of music by going through more conventional channels (e.g., devoting herself to playing instruments and going to school specifically for music). Yet, on the other, even an “old soul” like her couldn’t avoid the pull of reality TV to get the word out about her talent. Which is why, in 2014, she appeared on Ísland Got Talent and, in 2015, on The Voice Ireland. The sound of her vocals, perceived for the first time by the public, promptly drew comparisons to her to being akin an elderly woman with a smoker’s voice, which, in many ways, wasn’t necessarily a “warm” welcome into the music industry. But, nonetheless, Laufey kept at it, releasing her first EP, Typical of Me, in 2021. This after going “viral” with her 2020 single, “Street by Street.”

And so, in many ways, it’s been both a long and short road to Laufey’s current album, which she’s seen fit to turn into a deluxe edition called A Matter of Time: The Final Hour (Cinderella-y indeed—or just plain ominous, depending on one’s perspective). When the listener last left the standard edition of A Matter of Time, it was on a note of “Sabotage.” With said song being the grand finale (though some versions of the standard edition also include Laufey’s cover of “Seems Like Old Times”). One that had Laufey warning her lover, “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/It’s just a matter of time till you see the dagger/It’s a special of mine to cause disaster.” These being the kind of introspective, self-reflecting lyrics that are in keeping with Laufey telling Tracy Smith of CBS Sunday Morning, “I can access my deepest, deepest emotions only when I’m on my own… Writing with someone else in the room kind of just feels like…it feels like meditating with someone watching you.”

So, clearly, with “Madwoman,” the song that kicks off the deluxe edition, Laufey continued to write the lyrics on her own, being so bold as to admit of her nature, “Seeking chaos, can’t help giving into passion.” And her passion, in this scenario, is for yet another man who proves to be “so vexing.” After all, like one of Laufey’s key inspirations, Taylor Swift (hear: “Tough Luck” for a prime example), half the reason to even bother with men is to write about them when they inevitably disappoint. And also like Swift, now Laufey has a song called “Madwoman” as well (granted, Swift’s is written as “mad woman” [complete with the lower case stylization]).

But Laufey’s “Madwoman” quite so serious, instead poking fun at her seemingly self-imposed “insanity” for going back to a relationship that is based on raw physical attraction rather than anything else more substantial. As Laufey emphasizes with lyrics that describe this man as “purely mythological, with the ugliest soul/You would think that he is holding me for ransom.” Because what other explanation could there be for Laufey subjecting herself to this sort of thing? Something that the ultimately eerie accompanying video also addresses by the end (and yes, The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Lola Tung a.k.a. Belly is a perfect casting choice to include considering her own “madwoman” tendencies when it comes to two men in that particular show).

The dreamy—and, at times The Twilight Zone-y—sound of the track (co-produced, as usual, by Laufey and Spencer Stewart) adds to the feeling that something is a bit “off” when it comes to this love, and toward the end there’s even a hint of a Carnival of Souls-esque organ to play up that unwanted reality all the more. This followed by a totally trippy musical outro.

One that leads into “How I Get,” a song that bears a similar musical and thematic tone. In fact, after about ten seconds of moody string arrangements, Laufey wastes no time in continuing her madwoman ways with the lines, “Human nature is strange/I know you’re bad for me.” Whether or not she’s talking about the same person who’s driving her crazy in “Madwoman” or not, it’s clear that Laufey’s only vice is falling for fuckboys. A vice so unbelievable to her that she goes out of her way to mention in the song that she doesn’t smoke cigarettes, doesn’t do things she’ll regret, doesn’t have mood swings and doesn’t “shoulder bets” (a phrase that presumably means she doesn’t take on any betting activities, ergo gambling debts).

And yet, when it comes to this one person, who’s as toxic for her as any of the aforementioned things, Laufey is powerless to resist. Hence, her question in the first verse, “Has addiction come for me?” If so, she seems to wonder, why must it be in this form and not a slightly more “fun” one? Like, say, smoking cigarettes (which has become the au courant thing to do again in these decidedly retro times).

As for the intonation of her vocals on this particular track, it finds her majorly channeling Madison Beer’s sound. Indeed, this is exactly the sort of song one could envision being on Locket. To be sure, it’s very much in line with the motif of “bad enough,” during which Beer insists that the relationship might be toxic “or whatever,” but surely not “bad enough to let my baby go.” Laufey evidently feels the same way about her own lethal love, once again acknowledging a hard truth by remarking on how this entire affair is “a journey that I’ll one day dread/I’m caught in a web/I’m blinded by you/That’s just how I get.” She even goes so far as to characterize this “hunger” as, ultimately, an appetite for destruction via the verse, “I have every bit of you/Every awful corner/Biting more than I can chew/Just so I’ll feel warmer/What a greedy, hungry horror am I.”

Keeping the self-loathing (or what some people just call self-awareness) at a steady clip, Laufey then brings her listener the anxious person’s/cynic’s anthem in the form of a piano-laden slow jam called “I Wait, I Wait, I Wait.” And yes, some elements of the chord progression do remind one of Taylor Swift’s “New Year’s Day” (therefore, Olivia Rodrigo’s “1 step forward, 3 steps back”). But this is more layered and sophisticated than that, both musically and lyrically. And yes, it’s a prime example of the kind of lyrics that make Laufey insist she must write alone—at least the first draft of a song. For these lyrics are far too confessional and introspective to be created in front of another person. Because, more accurate than her “like being watched while meditating” analogy, writing words such as these with another person in the room is more akin to getting undressed in front of them and just awkwardly standing there.

As a song that’s all about her sense of imminent doom, Laufey flips the script on “positive thinking” with such lyrics as, “I wait for the thunder in sunshine/Wait for sickness in health/I wait for the sorrow/The blue of tomorrow/Regrets of yesterday/I wait for an earthquake in silence/Wait for nightmares in a dream.” Her earnest delivery of these words is part of what makes them so hauntingly resonant. For who amongst us hasn’t been wont to catastrophize? To assume that the second something is going well (or even just “okay”), there’s bound to be a fallout. Because, in many people’s minds, that’s just how the universe operates. Seeking to collect on any and all of your “good times” with double the amount of bad times as recompense.

But for, Laufey, the thing she dreads most of all is “the day when you finally say/You’re out of love with me.” Again, it’s not for certain if the man she’s addressing on all four of these tracks is the same one, but, either way, her gamut of emotions in matters of love (however reluctant) is par for the course. After all, one day, a girl can be swooning, and the next, smarting.

Which is why at least part of Laufey’s conviction that the object of her affection is inevitably going to abandon her is, in some sense, a mode of self-protection. Preparing for the worst so as to avoid getting overly attached. Call it (as Laufey does), “The price of a cynic is joy for just a minute.” Whether she means the price of being a cynic or being with a cynic is at one’s discretion. Either way, all Laufey can do is “accept [her] hapless fate.” A fate that, as indicated by the final song on the deluxe edition, “I’ll Forget About You (In Time)” (yes, more clock references), seems to have fulfilled Laufey’s prophecy on “I Wait, I Wait, I Wait.” For it’s here that all the songs prior, which have built up to this moment in the narrative, have found Laufey in total emotional shambles.

Even so, she still has her dry wit to help cushion the blow, insisting, “I’ll forget about you in time/I won’t think about you when I die.” It’s this level of so-called overly dramatic heartbreak that perhaps hasn’t been heard since Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black. Elsewhere in the song, Laufey notes that her mother tries to assure her, “You will find another in this life.” To which Laufey can’t help but think, “I wish I could believe her words” and “I’ve fallen under the age-old curse.” That curse being to fall in love at all and risk having one’s heart decimated by a breakup. A heartbreak that is all the more profound when it’s first love, as it seems to be for Laufey. The dichotomy of sentiments that arise in the wake of such an emotional trauma are apparent in the conflicting back-to-back lines of the song that go, “Now I feel ruined ‘cause you treated me so awfully/I don’t know what you saw in me.”

At the end of the song, Laufey’s “certainty” of forgetting about this person is also contradicted by her final declaration turned into a question: “I’ll forget about him, won’t I?” Well, if she’s anything like Taylor Swift (which she’s already positioned herself as), probably not. But one thing the listener won’t forget is how this quartet of additional songs makes them feel. How it creates a richer trajectory from the beginning of the album to the end, with the former part of it finding Laufey at the jauntier (though still full of anxiety) phase of her relationship on a track like “Lover Girl,” only to be met with nothing but heartache and pain by the final hour.

And, speaking of that new title for the deluxe version, with it also comes new album artwork, featuring Laufey perched on the second rung of a ladder in the middle of a garden that looks decidedly ripped from Gwen Stefani’s Alice in Wonderland-themed “What You Waiting For?” video. Motioning with her hands in such a way as to make them serve as the hands on a clock (the way she uses her legs to do the same on the original album artwork), the Roman numerals subtly surrounding her add to the insidiousness of a title like The Final Hour. Which, although meant to refer to how this is the last gasp of A Matter of Time before Laufey moves on to the next album cycle, it also alludes to Laufey’s reconciliation with the final hour in a relationship. Thereby leaving her alone in the darkest hours of the night. But, as it is said, it’s always darkest before the dawn. Or, as Laufey’s song version of her mother would put it, “You will find another in this life.” Just maybe not another who makes you feel everything so intensely.