Laufey Says Eye Contact With Audience Members Still Unnerves Her Onstage

Laufey has revealed that looking an audience member directly in the eye during a performance still unnerves her, a habit she traces back to her classical training on the cello. In an interview published 11 August 2026, the singer told Billboard that she grew up picking a person in the crowd and accidentally staring into their eyes while she played.

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. Laufey said the discomfort has carried into her current arena shows, even as those large-scale performances have become the defining format of her touring career.

The irony is that Laufey now deliberately seeks out eye contact during her set closer, "Letter to My 13 Year Old Self." She said she searches the crowd for young fans, catching the eye of young girls in the audience. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes that makes her cry too.

She also told Billboard that arena shows feel more intimate to her than smaller theatres, citing the barricade walk — the stretch along the front barrier that puts her face-to-face with fans — as the reason. The larger the room, the closer she feels to the people in it.

Offstage, recognition has taken unexpected forms. Laufey recalled a waitress who asked her, "Are you the one on Fortnite?" — a reference to her in-game character in the blockbuster video game. The moment, she said, stood out as a sign of how far her reach has extended beyond music alone.

That reach has concrete numbers behind it. Her third studio album, A Matter of Time, debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 — the chart that ranks the most consumed albums in the United States each week, combining sales and streaming — in September 2025. It was her first top 10 entry on that chart and the highest-charting jazz album since 2018. The record simultaneously topped Billboard's Jazz Albums, Traditional Jazz Albums, Independent Albums and Vinyl Albums charts.

A Matter of Time went on to win Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 2026 Grammy Awards, Laufey's second consecutive win in the category after 2023's Bewitched, which had peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard 200. She was also named the Innovator honoree at Billboard Women in Music 2026.

Internationally, Laufey has landed two top 10 albums in Australia and recently wrapped an eight-show Australian tour. The Guardian reported in August 2025 that she described herself as "a bit scared of success" and spoke about filling arenas, dealing with mansplainers, and confronting her critics. Earlier, in a TikTok post from May 2026, she said she had harboured significant fear about launching her singing career, feeling it would not lead anywhere.

For an artist who once worried her career might go nowhere, the evidence now suggests otherwise — even if she still can't quite look the audience in the eye.