By Tasnim Oyshi
Staff Writer
With the release of her new album, “Midnight Sun,” on Sept. 26, Zara Larsson is establishing her role as a main pop girl. The album is influenced by Swedish folklore, Lisa Frank and Y2K aesthetics. It consists of 10 songs with tracks ranging from dance-pop anthems to more personal tracks.
After about 10 years in the industry, the singer experienced a resurgence in popularity after opening for fellow popstar Tate McRae on her “Miss Possessive” tour. Videos of her on stage have gone viral on TikTok recently, just in time for the release of the album. Her performance of the album’s first track, “Midnight Sun,” in particular, has been applauded for the choreography and her run during the chorus.
The music video for the song features Larsson surrounded by water and lying on grass as colorful words like “Believe” and “Connected” show up on the screen with butterflies surrounding them. In an interview with Fader, Larsson revealed she drew inspiration from Swedish myths of long-haired blonde nymphs, Lisa Frank and even the dolphin memes of her 2017 hit song with Clean Bandit, “Symphony.”
“Lisa Frank was such a full circle moment because my original idea was to have a really nymph-y [vibe],” she said. “The Lisa Frank thing, intentionally or not, really inspired the colors and the feeling. And then it kind of opened the door to, like, Barbie mermaid core.”
This theme is reflected in “Blue Moon,” which has a more romantic and airy feel. In an exclusive with People, Larsson shared that she wrote the song for her long-term partner, Lamin Holmén. “…I think he has just made me more expressive and confident in saying what I'm thinking or who I am as a person,” she said.
The song ends with a spoken outro by Larsson and producer MNEK, where he claims that they should “clean that up,” but she replies, “No, let’s get messy.” “Messy?” he questions. “Like really messy,” she says. This serves as the perfect transition to the next track, “Pretty Ugly.”
The music video for the third song on the album has Larsson dancing in a field with her backup dancers. The song is energetic and hype, beginning with the chant, “Have you ever seen a pretty girl get ugly like this?” The video has close-ups of cars, which are reminiscent of McRae’s music videos, and shots of the girls fighting and dancing in mud and rain, showing just how ugly and messy they can get.
The fourth track, “Girl’s Girl,” is not much different in sentiment. The lyrics talk about how she wants the boyfriend of her childhood friend, even though she “wants to be a girl’s girl.” “I’m singing about things that, five years ago or even a year ago, I couldn’t,” Larsson said to Vogue. “I don’t like to be mean, but I don’t have this feeling of having to be nice, a good girl, or a good feminist anymore. I’m 27 now, and I appreciate all parts of me.”
“Crush,” the fifth track, follows the trope of having messy experiences as she asks, “Am I just being messy?” as the lyrics express the feelings of crushing on another person while being in a relationship. The music video, released on Aug. 26, displays a sillier side of Larsson as she tries to kill a spider and gets bitten on the rear, resulting in it becoming giant. There are also clips of a Barbie-style version of Larsson going through the same dilemma.
“If you're a fan fan and you've been following me for a while, you’ll know I'm not a mysterious person,” she said to Fader. “I want to bring more of my personality into the music and into the songs because I just don't take it… I take it seriously, but it's not that serious, you know? Humor is something I always appreciate.”
“Crush” is followed by a change in pace with the upbeat, Scandi-pop-influenced “Eurosummer.” The lyrics at the end ask, “How sexy am I?” which matches the intro of the seventh track, “Hot & Sexy,” spoken by Tiffany Pollard. “Beautiful, fly, hot, and sexy,” Pollard recites her viral rant from the reality show, “Big Brother.”
Larsson shows a more vulnerable side of herself with track eight, “The Ambition,” and track nine, “Saturn’s Return.” In “The Ambition,” she talks about the competition that comes with being in the pop music industry. “I wanna be loved,” she sings, expanding on how she wants more, despite the heartbreak of her own ambition.
“I know it's a brief moment in time, and you can’t be number one forever, that's just the nature of it, but I just want to be it once, please just once,” she said to Fader. “I just want to taste it.”
In the second-to-last song, Larsson looks back on her time as an artist. She sings about her expectations of filling up stadiums by 20, which “didn’t happen, so she changed the deadline.”
Larsson expresses how crazy time is and how she might want to have babies like her friends now. Ultimately, she concludes that it feels good not to know what she’s doing and that she loves being free in her naivety.
Larsson ends the album with a flirty track called “Puss Puss,” which means “kiss kiss” in Swedish. She talks about how much she doesn’t want to hang up the call with her lover because she enjoys talking to him too much.
Overall, “Midnight Sun” is fun and dynamic, with hints of vulnerability. The danceability of the album exemplifies the energy of summer and this will be an exciting release for audiences to listen to. Fans can witness Larsson perform soon as she will be going on her own tour this fall, starting in October.
