Zara Larsson Essentials

The blueprints to Swedish singer-songwriter Zara Larsson’s sparky, effervescent brand of pop are sketched out across three of her earliest hits. There’s the carefree, live-for-the-moment energy of her 2015 international debut, chromatic summer smash “Lush Life”—so much a precursor to the heat-drenched sound of “Midnight Sun” and other cuts from the 2025 album of the same name, it was a hit twice over (thanks to a viral revival in 2026). Follow-up single “Never Forget You” introduced British hitmaker MNEK to the equation, their artistic chemistry and left-field ambition alchemising across a decade of collaboration, including Larsson’s distinct vocal turn on “Stateside” with PinkPantheress. That striking, cut-through tone has long been as essential to Larsson’s own winning formula as it has to others, as showcased on the third of that trio of early hits, Clean Bandit’s anthemic 2017 dance ballad “Symphony”, which opened up opportunity for Larsson to utilise her skyscraping range. Her experimental drive and open-minded approach to collaboration makes for a thrillingly diverse catalogue of songs. As she told Apple Music in 2024, “I’ll always be a pop girl, but pop is also quite broad.”