You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Leve is a jazz artist,
but I'm not sure how much that label matters to all the people who listen to her.
I read this headline in Vice from a few years ago that said,
the musical genre is dead, Gen Z killed it.
TikTok and Spotify algorithms aren't serving music to audiences based on genre.
And so it's easier than ever to ignore genre and just take what you want.
Like the entire musical world is a giant breakfast buffet at a fancy hotel.
But here are a couple of genre-related stats.
Leve was Spotify's most streamed jazz artist of 2022.
And her new album just broke Spotify's record for the most streams of a jazz album in a single day.
Let me back up.
Leve is a singer and songwriter, originally from Iceland.
She studied piano and cello as a kid.
When she was 15, she was a guest soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.
She went to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and that's when she started writing songs.
While she was still a student, she had a number one hit on Icelandic radio.
Her first album debuted at number one on Billboard's Alternative New Artist chart.