"From The Start" by Laufey // Song Review

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Laufey's "From The Start" is a refreshingly unconventional blend of jazz and pop that feels both timeless and modern. The instrumentation leans into a classic, vintage style while the lyrics are cheeky and youthful, creating a playful contrast that feels uniquely her. 

The song is a sweet and sincere portrait of unrequited love. On "From The Start", Laufey confesses her feelings for a friend who doesn't feel the same, and the vulnerability in her lyrics paired with the way she performs them feels deeply diaristic. "Don't you notice how I get quiet when there's no one else around?" she sings in the opening verse. "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". 

"You know when you're in high school or middle school or something, and you have a friend, and you kind of like them, and you're listening to them describe somebody they like? It's this kind of sinking feeling," Laufey said in an interview with Genius: Verified, breaking down the song. "You know, I was always very sheltered. I never really dared to fully express exactly how I felt about someone. So for this, I just wrote it, kind of this confession, into a song."

Laufey is redefining modern jazz for a new generation of music lovers. She takes the timeless melodies and traditional sounds of the genre and transforms them into something so fresh. Through her music, she finds a way to continuously blend classic and current styles in such a unique way. "From The Start" is one of the best examples of all of her influences coming together, in a way that is so heartfelt and true to her wide range of influences.

The chorus is one of the stand out moments of the song. She sings, "That when I talk to you, oh, Cupid walks right through and shoots an arrow through my heart and I sound like a loon, but don't you feel it, too? Confess I loved you from the start".

"I wanted the chorus to be this just straight-up, like, confession of love that I would never actually dare to say in person. And that's where the craziness comes from, that speculation, like, wait, if I'm holding back and not telling you, maybe you're holding back and not telling me," Laufey added in her interview with Genius: Verified.

Released in 2023 as the lead single of her sophomore album Bewitched, "From The Start" quickly started gaining traction, but truly transcended the fleeting nature of TikTok trends. By blending Bossa Nova rhythms with jazz-pop sensibilities, Laufey crafted a sound that felt both timeless and refreshingly new.

"Sometimes you put a song on TikTok and it does well because it's visually stimulating or it has a hooky lyric, but it won't go past that," she said in an interview with Billboard. She knew she had something special with "From The Start" when it had surpassed over a million streams in less than 24 hours, which was her personal record up to that point. Since it's release in 2023, the song has garnered over 800 million streams on Spotify.

"I think the reason it's resonating is, I think it's two-pronged. I think maybe it's a sound that they haven't really heard before. It's kind of, you know, infused with these Bossa Nova and jazzy grooves that I think haven't really been at the forefront in pop music for a while," Laufey told Genius: Verified. "I think it's also just the brutal honesty of the lyrics. I think a lot of people have felt that way before."


Check out more from my song of the week series here. ☆ Thanks for reading!



Photo Credit: Laufey, AWAL



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