Zara Larsson Takes Us on a Ride

I say good-bye to Zara Larsson and drum my fingers on my laptop. My apartment, bursting with excited conversation that zipped from feminism to girlhood with all the frenetic speed of girls in a club toilet, is now utterly silent. “I feel like there's very few people that I can see not getting along with after sitting down and talking,” she says at one point during our interview. I can personally vouch for that.

I glance down at my phone and a friend has already texted to ask what Zara is like, myself having kept this secret poorly from them.

A mere two days before our call, Larsson had been awarded the Billboard Award for Best Breakthrough, presented by her friend and collaborator, Tyla. Just one day before that, Larsson released Midnight Sun: Girl’s Trip, the remix album to last year’s electrifying Midnight Sun. One either belts those two words to the tune of the Swedish pop star’s Grammy-Award nominated (and highly addictive) single, or one doesn’t.

At least we all get to hear it with PinkPantheress, who joins a remix line-up that features Tyla, Robyn, Shakira, Kehlani and more. Within the space of a year, Larsson has experienced the kind of explosive success aspiring pop stars don’t even bother daring to dream about. That is, when women are even enabled to dream about sweeping victory: ambition is still framed as delusion until proved otherwise. And yet it’s her self-belief that lines the cradle of her success. “Because I have been in a flop state before this album, I have realized that I just want to make things that I love,” Larsson says. “I don’t care if they love it, if they hate it. I'll still make things.”

Despite having been a chart-topping singer for over a decade, her former songs just weren’t sticking. Ok, here’s a singer with some good tunes. So what? With Midnight Sun, took control of both her sound and vision, creating one of the most successful albums of 2025. That’s what. Midnight Sun became a defining album of an already packed year, winning acclaim from critics, and applause from a seemingly infinite international fanbase. “I think, more than anything, that people really want to be a part of the world that we created,” she says. “There's an identity to it, and there's like a community in it.”

Yet what is more remarkable is her steady and then suddenly explosive acceleration onto the world stage.

The most radical aspect of Larsson’s rapid rise, as I see it, is how totally accessible she remained. For Zara is fluent in Swedish, English and internet. The reigning prom queen of Euro pop — and detention diva of social media — may not be the first chronically online pop star, but she’s probably the first to full-heartedly embrace it.

Perhaps the elixir behind her magnetism, beyond the authenticity ascribed to her, is sheer joy. She’s having fun with it all; her audience devours it. She loves to see it, too. “I see people have dressed up,” Larsson says of her shows. Her tone slows down. “They've taken their time, they probably had a really fun time getting ready with their friends at home. That makes me actually cry sometimes. Like, I have been on the tour bus. This is amazing. It's like, that is what I want,” she says, smiling. “That makes me feel so proud.”

After a while I pick up my phone. Did you remember to tell her we want her to come on a night out?? My friend adds. They can’t help it. Like her Midnight Sun track — and her Girl’s Trip remix with Emilia — she is a ‘Girl’s Girl’, after all.

Read on for PAPER’s cover story with Zara Larsson. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Well, firstly, congratulations on Girl’s Trip. Could you tell me about the story behind making the remix album to Midnight Sun?

I knew I wanted to make a proper deluxe. I released deluxe versions of Poster Girl before, for example, but it’s never really felt intentional or purposeful. And I really want to make it as good as I can. I love Midnight Sun. I don’t think I’ve ever cared about a project as much that I have made in my life as much as I have for Midnight Sun. That's my baby. I really was a big part of making that record. Like, for the first time, I wrote all the songs, I was a part of the visuals. It just felt like I needed the world of Midnight Sun to keep on living for a little while and to have people in it, especially up until summer. Because this is also the first time that people will actually be able to enjoy the album in actual summertime.

I wanted to work with more women, I’ve been saying that for so long. I've collaborated with a lot of people before, but I was like, I have to work with more women. And that's kind of what inspired the whole thing. I knew I wanted it to be all girls, and when we got into it, at the very beginning of January, it was so fun. But it was also a bit tricky. I just felt like, Oh my God. Like, no one's gonna be on. I felt a little… not insecure, but I didn't feel super calm. I was somewhere in the middle of that.

The duality of women.

Right. We started reaching out to people that I love, and people who are my friends. We reached out to Kehlani very early on, and Eli, because I have seen Eli on my TikTok feed. And I was like, this girl is funny, so talented. And Tyla, we also were hanging out. I was like, hey, look, I really, really want you on “Hot and Sexy”. And she was like, I want to be on “Hot and Sexy”! Because when you're on the internet and you see what people are saying, I think she was really persuaded by the way that people are like, I want these two girls on a song. And that's so cool, rooting for us.

Obviously Margo [XS] and Helena [Gao], the two women that have helped me create the whole Midnight Sun project, I really wanted to feature them. They're the backbone of my creation. And Robyn… Queen, Queen, Queen. Shakira… So cool. A little talk of the town… she heard I was doing this project.

Wait. Her people came to you?

Yes! I would actually say that a lot of people came to me. I was like, no fucking way this is real.

What did that exact moment feel like? When you clocked this is now your life.

That was a real pinch me moment, for sure. Because I have to be honest. Girlhood ,for me, is the biggest thing that I’ve done in my career.

It was hard, but it did just come together beautifully and unfolded in the most perfect way. And I feel like it was just the universe telling me I was on the right track. It has really taught me to trust my instincts, trust my taste, because it's also been really interesting, releasing the album. I haven't been that much online. I don't have Twitter because it's such a scary place, but on Tiktok, it's quite polarizing,

Some people are like, I love it, and some people are like, I fucking hated it. And I think that is so interesting. I really enjoy that it is quite polarizing, because it means that people feel something. If people don't like it, that's awesome. Because someone else loves it. That’s just the nature of things.

You’re not making background music, but statement music.

Exactly! Exactly, exactly. It's so fun that people have opinions about my art, because it means that people have listened.

Going back to the internet. It can build up women really quickly, and then tear them down even faster. Do you ever worry about that?

I’m very aware of that. I spoke about that quote by Taylor Swift [on Call Her Daddy]: “they want to see you rise, but they don’t want to see you reign”. It's true. I feel like I have, during the past six months, been very aware of that, and I really tried to stay in the positive light of someone who is on the come up and an underdog, because I know in my world, in my dream, I'm not going to be an underdog forever. And I feel like once you start getting a lot of negativity, or people try to pull you down, it really is just a proof of success.

I remember, even being on the Tate [McRae] tour, people were building me up, hyping me up. Let me sit with this, because I know it won’t last forever. One day I’m gonna wake up and be over-rated. And I’m really excited for that day. Even now I'm starting to get like comments that are like, I'm so fucking tired of this song, when it comes to “Midnight Sun.”

At the end of the day, it's like, actually none of my business, and all I can do is just to get it out to as many people as possible in the most authentic way I can, which is by just being me. And I think people who are really negative, I have a really hard time picturing them. Like, instead of spreading all this, why don't you just go and draw a painting, make a song, do a dance?

You’ve been really good-humored about your decade-long hustle, making the jokes first about the Khia Asylum. I’m really curious about the psychology behind being so openly generous with the world about this.

For sure. I think I'm just, by nature, a happy person. I have a really easy time moving on from things. Like, I don't hold a grudge.

You’re not a dweller.

Oh, not at all. I have a joke with my best friend. Every time she sits by a piano and she starts playing, I am literally like, wait, you play the piano? Every time, it's fucking crazy. So I think it's something wrong with my brain, but then it's a very active choice. You are the main role, the star, of the movie of your life. You're also the director of that movie, to choose what you are focusing on, like what's in the frame, what you're looking at, what [makes] the final cut.

I've never read any self-help books or anything like that, but I'm super, super lucky to have really positive, grounded people around me. We're very smart and enjoy life. I love life and I love people to connect. That's what it really comes down to.

What does power look like to you?

First of all, I am a woman. I started off as a girl, and now I’m a woman. I feel it in the way I look at things. I feel it in how I communicate with people. But I really feel like I am so empowered by people like my friends, even the people I work with and have around me.

And I think one of the biggest changes that I've made over the past 10 years in my career is to have a lot of women around me. I made that as a very active choice. I want to go on the road, and I want to have a female tour manager. I want the production manager to be a woman. I want my band to be women. I want the dancers to be women. I want the people I write with to be majority women. If you're gay, you can stay.

As women, we're so capable and smart. And I think when you surround yourself with other women, you don't have to over explain yourself. Why are people connecting with Midnight Sun? I think it's because it feels so me and I allowed myself to be so free in the writing rooms, because I did this record with MNEK, Margo and Helena. I really felt like, finally, I'm no longer in rooms that are dominated by a bunch of men who I don't really know.

Like, why the fuck is there nine men in this, what are we all doing? Of course I couldn't write a good song, because I was 17, and I was the only woman in the room. So that's the biggest power that I get, to choose my bubble. And where I put my money and how I want to empower women, not only in theory, but in practice.

You’re one of our generation’s most outspoken feminists. As a pop star: can feminism in pop be radical? Or is it packaged to be digestible and friendly?

That's so funny you ask that, because I have been thinking about that a lot the past couple of weeks. I'm such a pop girl, right? But I'm also someone who just wants to say how I feel, and not really care about my songs being played on the radio. I don't care about the big corporations. I don't.

A big part of pop culture is commercial, and it's about reaching the big masses and the mainstream. But again, coming back to my recent stuff, I think the best artists, or just the best, most interesting people throughout history, are quite polarizing. And some people might think I'm the devil, and some people might think it's really important to speak about feminism and to speak about women's health and to talk about Palestine, or to speak about things that other people are a bit scared of. I just feel like it's such a part of who I am and what I believe in. I don't want to ever feel like I can't be myself in the name of pop music.

I'm quite punk and I think maybe we look at pop, especially the space that women are in, as perfectly packaged. Maybe that's something we expect, right?

Like Beyonce. She says so much throughout her music, throughout her career, from Lemonade: I'm gonna be the best artist that I can be. I feel like something happened during that album, and now she is doing so much for the culture, for her people, for women, for Black women, for [the LGBTQ community], through her music. I do think I would love to incorporate that even more in my music and art, in who I am, because I do have so many opinions about things. We all do. I'm just not scared of a conversation. And I want a conversation. I want people to discuss things.

It’s an important time to remind the world, you can be hot, gorgeous, beautiful, fanciful… And actively engaging with politics.

I'm just a woman living in the world, so I do feel like I'm a part of the patriarchy in a way. I want to look beautiful, I want to do a show, and I want to put on my makeup, and I want to look a bit sexy. But I also think that's human nature, right? I feel like women are really beautiful and sexy. But also I think that the fault in society is that people who don't respect [women] objectify them, or view them as one thing. That they can only be sexy.

Because you can be very smart and very beautiful and very funny and very creative. Like, we're so multi-dimensional, and I think that's why it's nice also to surround myself with women, because we know that. I think a really big part of my personality is being silly. I love to have fun. That is the fucking purpose of life for me, to have fun all the time and to be silly. But that doesn't mean that I'm not a serious person. I still have things that I find important in that, but I just want to have fun. Women can see that complexity.

I'm not perfect. I don't think anyone is. But I don't want to feel scared about saying stuff and creating and starting a conversation or a debate because, oh, I need to sell more records. And at the end of the day, I feel like there's very few people that I can see not getting along with after sitting down.

Especially for women our age, our exposure to feminism came from the early dregs of the internet. For me it was Tumblr. I had such a feminist algorithm, which was not a word we used back then.

Oh my god, right.

I think part of getting older is realizing people just don’t have the same access to information and resources.

Yeah, because even now, with the internet, and even more information out there, what's scary about it is the algorithms are so fine-tuned to a point where you end up in this echo chamber. It's become even more polarizing. You are in this little bubble of your algorithm. That's why people get stuck in these, you know, red pills. It gets very extreme.

That's actually why I had to delete Twitter. Not because people were like, flop! I saw so much shit. I was like, I know this is put here to enrage me and to make me feel something and then spend more time on the app, right? Get my cortisol up. I don't want that.

The internet is, I think, a magical place, a really crazy place. It's also incredible that we have basically the world at our fingertips, and people at our fingertips, like we can connect with people, we can write, we can reach out, we can learn and things we can be entertained. The internet is a crazy place. I'm really such an internet girl.

You’re so present on it. What would be the biggest misconception people could have of you?

I think it's fun, speaking on the internet and my style and all of that. Obviously, the dolphin meme has played a big part in the lore of me, right? But it really wasn't on the mood board. And what's so amazing about that is that I wasn't inspired by the dolphin at all. I was really inspired because I had already worked with Charlotte [Rutherford] for the video for “Pretty Ugly” that we had released earlier, which is, like, cheerleaders.

It’s a great video.

So much fun. So unapologetically girly. We had already shot back to back. And then we had an album cover. So, like, we had everything planned already, and the “Midnight Sun” video was unapologetically green screen, a little bit of internet vibes, really inspired by Ray of Light era Madonna, you know. Shakira with the beautiful sunset, and she's in the water. It was just fun and colorful. Then, when people saw it, they were like, this kind of looks like a dolphin.

In a way, [the dolphin] made it even more fun, because I think people felt like they got to be a part of writing my story, in a way? It really wasn't something we like, Oh my God, this dolphin is popping off. We have to do something with it. It just sort of happened, it just fell into place that way, where people would put it on me. And now I'm the mother of dolphins. Which…

It's a good moniker to have.

I love it. I mean, that was like, two years ago now, when that happened. And now I've adopted it fully. I'm like, okay, you know what? I'm gonna ride it. I'm gonna ride the wave.

But I think that's the thing with the whole rollout. If it feels fun and it feels real. That's the fun thing about the internet, it's such an ongoing conversation, right? I like to invite the people that are caring about this project and who care about me, into this. It gave me so much. Now I have a dolphin as a mascot. There's always someone who's dressed up as a dolphin in the crowd. There's always an inflatable dolphin, riding the hands of the crowd.

That seems like your entire vision. Repurposing our noughties’ little girl aesthetics, which was as much riding dolphins as it was rainbows and horses and flowers.

I feel like I live out my child fantasy of the world. You know? You dress your Bratz up, or you watch the Swan Lake Barbie movie. That's what life is like.

Oh my god, I loved Barbie Swan Lake.

It really is a celebration of girlhood, and to be unapologetically a girl. To be someone who likes to have fun, and to really embrace that, because I've been trying, actually, to suppress that a bit in my career.

You can ask my sister, I've always loved to dress quite eclectic. Glitter. Fluff. Sequins. Pink. Like, I love a neon. Being an artist, I also had this dream of also being in fashion, because I think fashion is what dictates what is cool. They’re the gatekeepers of coolness in the industry. I think I was just dimming that down. I was like, maybe I should tap into the Swedish silhouette, dark clothes.

Really, I was like fuck that this era. It's teasing, it’s flirting a little bit with tacky. And that is actually really me, and I want to be invited to the fashion shows, not because I wore the right dress, but because they want me there, because of who I am as an artist.

And yet we’re already seeing your Midnight Sun impact upon women’s everyday fashion. It’s added an extra dimension to the y2k aesthetic. Hawaii flower clips and body glitter is everywhere.

Yeah, it’s fucking crazy!

It’s arguably the most immediate pop music impact in fashion since Brat.

It’s so amazing. That's what I want. I don't want to conform myself within the culture. My dream, I said this every year, my dream is to be a Halloween costume. For people to be able to put something on, and for people to be like, you’re Zara Larsson, right?

The flowers, the spray paint, the key chains, the glitter. When I look into the crowd at my shows and I see people have dressed up, they've taken their time, they probably had a really fun time getting ready with their friends at home. It's almost ceremonial in a way. You put on your outfit, you're ready to go to a concert. That makes me actually cry sometimes. That makes me feel so proud, more than anything, that people really want to be a part of the world that we created. There's an identity to it, and there's like a community in it

I think you always win when you stay true to who you are.

It celebrates our girlhood without diminishing us as women.

Right!

Often when women enjoy the things we enjoyed in our youth, it’s framed as a guilty pleasure.

Oh, totally. Yeah, there’s no guilt in any pleasure for me.

It is so true. It really is like a celebration of girlhood. Everyone who wants to listen to my music is invited. Everyone who wants to go on this journey is allowed to be in it and is celebrated. When I write my songs in the studio, or make my show, my core audience is girls and young women, because that's just what I identify with. And I think more than that, what do I want to see? What would I like to have seen as 15 years old?

Julia Fox recently said she’s not a celebrity, she’s an artist. Do you think they’re mutually exclusive?

I mean, shit. I'm not a celebrity, I'm an artist. I really do think she is. But also, like, I guess you're some sort of celebrity. Like, if you're going on Love Island, maybe that's like, performance art.

That’s so much fun.

You know what? I mean, fuck, that's like, kind of artistic.

I genuinely think that everyone has an artist who lives inside of them. How do you express that? And how little do you want to conform? Because there's something punk about Love Island, about going to a place where you're getting scrutinized, or people think you're dumb, and you don't care about that. Yeah, maybe you are. And who cares? I'm like, Oh, wait, that kind of eats down. But no, I do think that you can have a lot of attention without much substance.

I love most things. I love everything. There's some things I don't like, but I don't even dislike them. I just think they're not for me. And then if it’s really not for me, and I lowkey think that's fucking trash. It's just camp. Like, I don't even hate it. I'm like, That's so camp, you know? I either love it, it's not for me, or it's camp.

And that's just how I view things. I think celebrity of it all, at least it's entertaining, and that is some sort of an art form, I guess, yeah. But I obviously like to see myself as an artist.

Objectively, you are an artist, Zara.

Even when I used to have a blog, you know… maybe that's actually something we should think of more. Like, look at ourselves as artists.

I'm so jealous of my sister because she has, first of all, a million friends. She's such a good friend. And she goes rock climbing. We couldn't be more different. She wakes up at 5am; I go to sleep at 5am. Rock climbs, and then she meets her friends for brunch, and, like, she bakes bread. That's her new thing, she loves to bake bread. And then she does the pottery class that she goes to twice a week. She just has so many hobbies. She's, like, the only person I know that does this for fun. Like, if I would go rock climbing… I tried, and I hated it because I wasn't really good at it. And she was like, that's not the point. I'm like, what the fuck? She just enjoys her life and enjoys the experience of doing things. And not being scared of the result.

That's the key of life. I guess that's how I feel with my music, and why I'm not scared of flopping. Because I enjoy the experience.

Photography: Julia and Vincent
Story: Bea Isaacson

Styling: Jared Ellner
Makeup Artist: Jimmy Stam
Hair Artist: Rachel Lita
Nails: Analysse Hernandez
Production Designer: Allegra Peyton

Digitech: Ryan Spencer
Photo Assistants: Brandon Yee and Nikko Peach
Styling Assistant: Maya Sauder
Set Decorator: Ann Lee
Art Department: Andrew Considine, Cameron Robsen & Ann Neimann
Production Assistant: Jillian Helm

Chief Creative Officer: Brian Calle
Executive Creative Director: Jordan Bradfield
Executive Creative Producer: Angelina Cantu
Senior Editor: Joan Summers
Social Media Editor: Alaska Riley

Graphic Design by Composite