Laufey – Spark Arena, 12 August 2026: Review

I need to start this review somewhere slightly different, because I was introduced to Laufey by my 15-year-old daughter, Ava, and last night sitting in Spark Arena I finally understood why my daughter LOVES this so much.

At one point Laufey spoke beautifully about teenage girls and the struggles they face — the emotions, falling in love, getting your heart broken, insecurity, trying to work out who the hell you are and where you fit in this crazy world. As a Dad, something suddenly resonated with me and I thought, right, I get it now. This isn’t manufactured pop, designed in some boardroom to appeal to teenage girls; this is real, raw and incredibly powerful, and she is putting into words and music things that thousands of young women in that arena are feeling but perhaps don’t always know how to say.

Suddenly I wasn’t just listening to Laufey, I was understanding my daughter a little more, and that alone made this concert pretty special.

The rise of Laufey has been something quite exceptional to watch, and exceptional probably doesn’t even cover it. From appearing as a teenager on Iceland’s Got Talent and later The Voice Iceland, to finding this enormous worldwide audience with her beautiful throwback jazz stylings, she has just gone from strength to strength. Somehow, in a world of manufactured pop, algorithms and disposable music, Laufey has gone almost completely the other way — jazz, strings, orchestras, proper musicians, proper songs and, most importantly, that voice.

Which brings me to Spark Arena last night, because there are concert entrances and then there is the entrance of incredible. Smoke, lights, shadows, an orchestra and this almost cinematic sense that something enormous was about to happen, and then suddenly there she was.

This wasn’t simply a concert; it was a spectacle. The lighting was incredible, the staging magnificent, the use of smoke and dancers was beautifully considered, and the symphonic support behind her was absolutely extraordinary. There was so much happening visually, yet none of it ever got in the way of the person standing in the middle of it all.

Act I

She opened with Clockwork, and almost immediately it felt more like the opening scene of a musical than a traditional concert, before moving into Lover Girl, which for me was one of those moments where everything came together.

The outfit she was wearing was beautiful, the lighting was magnificent, the orchestra swelled behind her (either side of her) and suddenly I wasn’t sitting in Spark Arena anymore. I felt like I was sitting in a World War II bunker somewhere, smoking a cigarette, staring into the darkness and fantasizing about this incredible woman whose voice was somehow finding its way to me through a beat-up old wireless radio somewhere in the trenches.

It literally made my heart stop and the eyes water, and I found myself thinking, who is this young artist?

That probably sounds ridiculously dramatic, but that is what great live music can do to you. For a few minutes you aren’t sitting in seat whatever, row whatever, surrounded by thousands of other people; you’re wherever the music decides to take you.

She followed with Dreamer and Falling Behind, then Silver Lining and Bored, and by now you started to appreciate the enormous scale of what had been created. This wasn’t simply someone standing on a stage singing a collection of songs; this was theatre, with magnificent orchestral arrangements, dancers moving around her, smoke rolling across the stage and lighting that constantly transformed the entire arena.

Act I finished with Too Little, Too Late, and then, just when you thought you had worked out what kind of show you were watching, everything changed again.

Act II — The Jazz Club

This might have been my favourite part of the entire night because Spark Arena effectively disappeared and suddenly I wasn’t sitting in an arena in Auckland anymore; I was sitting in some beautiful little 1940s jazz bar.

There should have been cigar smoke hanging in the air, cheap whiskey on the tables and people whispering in dark corners while this extraordinary woman sang somewhere through the haze.

She opened the section with Old Devil Moon, before moving through Haunted, Valentine and Fragile, and finishing with the stunning Let You Break My Heart Again. It was absolutely bloody beautiful, and this was where Laufey’s voice really took over the entire room.

Forget the size of Spark Arena, forget the production and forget the thousands of people sitting around you, because somehow this woman can stand in the middle of an enormous arena and make you feel like she’s sitting three metres away singing directly to you. That is an incredibly rare quality in any performer, and she seems to do it almost effortlessly.

Act III — Something completely different again

Then came Carousel, Forget-Me-Not and the Cuckoo Ballet and once again the entire show transformed in front of us.

It became whimsical, theatrical and almost Disney-like at times, but never cheesy. Everything was clever, beautifully staged and completely considered, and every light, every movement, every dancer and every piece of music seemed to have a reason for being there. You got the feeling that absolutely nothing in this production happened by accident.

Act IV

Then we were back into the songs with Mr. Eclectic, Madwoman, Promise, Goddess, Tough Luck, Snow White and finally, From the Start and this was where something else really struck me about Laufey.

There is an old-world quality to her that I genuinely struggle to compare to anyone else. She somehow brings jazz, classical music, pop and theatre together — with even a little bit of Disney magic thrown in — and wraps it around songs that can feel completely relevant to a 15-year-old girl in Auckland while simultaneously sounding like they could have been playing through a wireless radio in 1943.

And maybe that’s exactly why Ava loves her, because underneath all of those beautiful arrangements, magnificent clothes, orchestras and old-world glamour, Laufey is talking about things that couldn’t be more current. She is singing about being young and insecure, wanting desperately to be loved, getting rejected, falling hopelessly for someone, having your heart broken, wondering whether you’re beautiful enough and, probably most importantly, wondering whether you’re enough, full stop.

Those feelings haven’t changed in 80 years, and Laufey has simply found this extraordinary way of putting them into music that feels completely modern while sounding timeless.

Then came Sabotage, which was one heck of a way to close the main show. After nearly two hours of elegance, vulnerability, jazz, orchestration and theatre, there was this enormous final release of energy, but thankfully she wasn’t quite finished.

The encore brought Castle in Hollywood and then, beautifully, Letter to My 13 Year Old Self and for me that brought the entire night full circle.

Here was a song speaking directly to that younger girl about the insecurities, the fears, the things that hurt and all the things you wish you could somehow go back and tell your younger self would eventually be OK. I looked around Spark Arena at thousands of young women completely connected to what this woman was saying, and naturally I thought about Ava.

That’s when the whole night made sense to me.

Laufey had somehow created an arena-sized production that still felt incredibly intimate, theatrical and personal. Spark Arena had become a theatre, a smoky 1940s jazz club, a wartime bunker and occasionally somewhere that existed only inside your own head, and somehow this extraordinary young woman held the whole thing together with little more than brilliant songwriting, wonderful musicianship and that magnificent voice.

I walked into Spark Arena knowing Laufey was extraordinarily talented, but I walked out understanding why my daughter loves her and, perhaps more importantly, understanding my daughter a little more as well.

For a Dad, that’s a pretty powerful thing to get from a concert.

Real, raw, powerful and absolutely beautiful.

What an extraordinary artist, and what an absolutely magnificent show.

By Aaron Gascoigne