Summer Isn’t Over Yet: Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun

Considering that the conversation in the music industry for the past year-plus has been all about a trio (Charli, Chappell and Sabrina) whose long-standing slog in the music industry finally paid off after years of releasing albums and singles, it bears reminding that Zara Larsson is just one such type of singer. Except that her slog, now five albums in with Midnight Sun, has yet to really bring her the international success she deserves, with most of her singles finding their highest chart positions only in her native land of Sweden. Perhaps that’s part of why Midnight Sun is such an homage to her country—in particular, the uniqueness of its midnight sun, which occurs during the summer months. In other words, it feels like a truly endless summer in a different kind of way thanks to the near-omnipresence of the sun at practically all hours of the day (especially the further north one goes).

This is one of the feelings Larsson wanted to capture for the record, releasing a statement that declared, “I really am proud of my Swedish pop heritage, so I wanted to write about a Swedish summer where the sun never goes down. I wanted the whole album to feel like it’s a summer night and it never ends. And it doesn’t matter if it’s December: the summer night will be there for you. It’s waiting for you, it will come back for you, and you will come back for it.” Larsson’s sun-worshipping vibe immediately kicks off the record with, what else, “Midnight Sun,” which was accompanied by a video not only awash in 00s-meets-Madonna’s “Love Profusion” aesthetics, but also one that shows just how much the song is an homage to the majesty of Mother Nature herself. So it is that Larsson mucks about in various water-y and meadow-y settings while singing such lyrics as, “It’s golden hour all the time/It’s that midnight sun-kissed skin under the red sky,” “Hold me like the pebbles in your hand/Initials in the sand, yeah/Summer isn’t over yet” and “Connected/I’m so in touch with all/Feel protected/By the moon and the stars/I’m walking barefoot, feel the grass between my toes.”

Her reverence for the spiritual connection she has with nature continues on “Blue Moon” (no, it’s not a cover of the song The Marcels popularized in 1961). Because, obviously, if there’s a song that pays tribute to the sun, there has to be one that does so for the moon as well. And here, Larsson takes her tribute one step further by centering it around a romance under the stars as she urges her lover, “Shine on me, kiss me in the dark [Lana Del Rey has said that one before]/Tell me I look beautiful, underneath the stars.” Co-produced by Margo XS, MNEK (a long-time collaborator of Larsson’s) and Zhone (lately a key part of the Keshassaince via Period), the sound of the backing track can best be described as lush and subtly urgent as Larsson continues, “Tender touch, pull my straps down/We ain’t gotta go fast now/It’s an endless honeymoon phase/And the fire never goes out/I’m in heat when I feel you/You got me blushing, I’m in full bloom.” So yes, it is a simultaneously sweet and horny song, with further reference to the moon being made by way of the common metaphor “once in a blue moon,” wielded through the lyrics, “You say the don’t make ‘em like me no more/Maybe once in a blue moon.”

As the track comes to a close, there’s an exchange between Larsson and her producer (presumably MNEK), during which he remarks, “I think we should clean that up, I don’t know.” Larsson insists, “No.” “No?” She then adds (à la Rosé on “Messy”), “No, let’s get messy.” “Messy?” “Like really messy.” This provides the perfect lead-in for “Pretty Ugly,” during which Larsson immediately demands, “Have you ever seen a pretty girl get ugly like this?/Messy like this?/Losing her shit” (the answer to those questions is: of course, Regina George). As the song that served as the first single from Midnight Sun, it established a singular tone that doesn’t really exist on any other part of the record, with Larsson embodying her inner Gwen Stefani on “Hollaback Girl” as she braggadociously continues, “Fuck the ladylike, more crazy like/Flipping the tables at the bar, turn the beat up, make it hard/Wanna take it too far, ain’t afraid tonight.”

Later in the song, Larsson makes a play on the old saying, “U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no alibi, you ugly/Yeah, yeah, you ugly” by announcing (in that cheerleader chant-y voice), “I don’t need no alibi/Pre-pretty ugly/I can see you’re terrified/Still wanna fuck me.” In the video, Larsson goes all out to prove her willingness to “get messy” by taking to the wet mud and rolling around with some of the other dancers she’s with as the rain falls. Visuals that further emphasize her support for the “crazy bitch” lifestyle, as evident in the verse, “I might slit a tire, crash a Benz/I might hook up with your friend/Do that shit again.”

Larsson then does a total one-eighty in terms of tone by then segueing into the sweet-sounding, redemption-seeking “Girl’s Girl.” Or at least, that’s how it comes across at first, with Larsson painting the picture, “It hit me the other night/Sleepless, I can’t get you outta my mind/Fantasy of danger, yeah, I like the design/Know what I want isn’t right.” And the reason for that, of course, is that what she “wants” would violate one of the key tenets of “girl code”—stealing a friend’s boyfriend. Or even deigning to think of stealing him.

Once the beat drops around the seventeen-second mark, Larsson, in turn, starts to drop her “feeling guilty” act as she says, “But you’re with somebody else, I know that girl/Since we were ten and twelve/Yes, I’m aware, but I don’t care/‘Cause temptation is getting to me.” Both the sound and subject of “Girl’s Girl” bear all the jealousy/fighting over a guy hallmarks of a classic late 90s/early 2000s song (think: Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine,” Mýa’s “Case of the Ex” and Nivea’s “Don’t Mess With My Man”). This extends to Larsson presenting a kind of femme fatale persona via the moral dilemma posed by the question, “I wanna be a girl’s girl/But what happens when a girl’s girl wants the boy?”

Having already laid the groundwork for “Crush” with “Girl’s Girl” (on which she says, “Having a crush ain’t a crime”), it’s the appropriate song choice to follow the latter, with Larsson resigning herself to her crush being something that can never truly come to fruition. And, this time around, she depicts the difficulty of having one from the perspective of already being in a relationship with someone else, as opposed to lusting after a friend’s boyfriend. In this scenario, too, Larsson speaks to how half the allure of a person when you have a crush on them is the fantasy of what they might be, how a relationship with them might be. Having previously wielded this word—fantasy—on “Girl’s Girl” with the lyrics, “Fantasy of danger, yeah, I like the design/Know what I want isn’t right, having a crush ain’t a crime,” she uses it again in “Crush” to explain that it’s not worth sacrificing a sure reality for a fantasy that can’t possibly live up to one’s expectations. Thus, Larsson sings, “Then it hits me like reality/I can’t lose him to a fantasy.”

And yet, in spite of not ever “taking things to the next level” with her crush, Larsson can’t help but still feel a sense of loss and heartache over someone she never got to “fully realize” things with, adding, “It ain’t a heartbreak, but it still hurts enough.” The tinge of sadness to that admission is belied by the upbeat, ultra-danceable musical backing, co-produced by Margo XS, Zhone and Troy Taylor. That sadness further explored on the “real talk” bridge of the track, which finds Larsson questioning, “What’s the need for destruction?/This might get ugly/You will ruin my life/Tell me/Why do I crave your attention?/I got someone at home who treats me right.” She then continues to repeat how it’s only “just a crush,” as though to keep telling herself that her feelings ought to be brushed aside and/or buried deep down inside.

The anxiousness of “Crush” gives way to the light-heartedness of “Eurosummer” (because any song titled as such simply has to be light-hearted). With a background instrument—thanks to Margo XS and Zhone—that harkens back to the sound of Vika Jigulina and Edward Maya 2009 hit (at least, expectedly, in Europe), “Stereo Love.” That same kind of nostalgic aura pervades “Eurosummer” as Larsson sets the scene, “In my little sundress, barely/Covers me up, tell me/How sexy am I?/Very/Drunk on a beach, barely/Getting no sleep, tell me/How good is this life?/Very/Every night’s an event.” That much is made clear when she later adds, “Naked and never sober/This feels like Euro Summer”—or does she really just mean a “British Summer”? To that point, her inner Charli XCX shines through when she layers on the description, “One more EasyJet/Got my lips sangria red/Smoking skinny cigarettes/Let me live until I’m dead.” The occasional infusion of “Spanish flavor” (it’s the guitars) into the music lends an added sense of carefreeness/partying the night away until dawn feeling to it. In short, the essence of what it has come to mean to be “European” (particularly from the outside-looking-in view of Americans who, increasingly, have no comprehension of what it means to have fun). But, more than that, Larsson conveys that a Eurosummer is all about having a sense of freedom, a loss of inhibition—and the feeling that perhaps anything is possible. Not to mention being imbued with a level of confidence that’s far less annoying than the American kind.

With that breed of confidence in mind, as “Eurosummer” draws to a close, Larsson repeats, “How sexy am I?/How sexy am I?/How sexy am I?/How sexy am—” With that cut-off of the question, the European stylings are quickly replaced by the New York house/ballroom-meets-90s dance sound of “Hot & Sexy,” which opens with, “Beautiful, fly, hot and sexy/Beautiful, fly and hot and sexy [this being a clip of a Tiffany Pollard sound bite]/I’m that girl, all the night, all the day” (a turn of phrase that has a certain parallel to The Kinks singing, “Girl, I want to be with you all of the time/All day and all of the night”). Having returned to almost the same pitch of grandiloquence from “Pretty Ugly” (complete with a chanting of certain lyrics in the background), Larsson still remembers to adhere to her “endless summer” motif by mentioning, vis-à-vis her and her girls (on any given night out), “It could still be November, but we still gon’ give u summertime.” In other words, this is a “hot and sexy” crew that brings the proverbial sunshine with them wherever they go, into whatever darkly-lit club they strut into.

Elsewhere in the song, Larsson once again brings up the term “puss puss”—which she also does in the video for “Pretty Ugly,” with the license plate of her car reading, “Puss Puss 97.” The phrase might sound “suggestive” to English speakers (which is probably part of the point for Larsson), but it just means “kiss kiss” in Swedish, with the 97 added to it because Larsson is one of the few women unbothered by proudly announcing she was born in the “late 1900s” (as Gen Z has taken to shading those born in the 90s—even though many “elder Gen Zers,” Larsson included, were born at that time as well). Alluding to said license plate, Larsson chants, “ ‘Puss puss 97’ on the number plate,” in between peppering in various other verses of unabashed rodomontade. For example, “Everywhere we go, it’s the main event/So take a picture for the camera” and “Oh, somebody come get her [a nod to Rae Sremmurd’s 2015 hit, “Come Get Her”)/‘Cause we’re eating, just like dinner.”

And yet, as “superficial” as “Hot & Sexy” might sound, Larsson embeds a deeply political message with the outro, “Tale as old as time/Crime on womankind/Scared to go outside/It still blows my mind/How we just let it slide/I’m done feeling like prey/Watching my back every day/Must say, it’s getting insane/Getting told I need to change/It’s boys that need to be raised/Can I be a girl? Can I, can I, can I just live?/Can I just live?/Let a girl, let a girl, let a girl be/Hot and sexy.” Amen.

Despite exuding a generally “no fucks given” aura thus far, Larsson taps into the part of herself that really cares (not just about what other people think, but about being “successful”) on “The Ambition.” Indeed, of all the tracks on Midnight Sun, “The Ambition” is the only one that acknowledges the abovementioned slog that Larsson has been going through since she first started her career over a decade ago.

Echoing some of the themes that JADE explores on “Angel of My Dreams” and “IT Girl” from That’s Showbiz Baby, Larsson explores the push and pull of wanting to be a “big deal” by wielding the “American dream,” Los Angeles and Hollywood as a synecdoche for the trouble with ambition. Which, in a nutshell, is that “everything [becomes] a competition” (#capitalism). An endless battle to try to be “the best,” even though there’s always some newer, younger pop star just around the corner. In the (Botox’d) face of this intense pressure to be the “hottest,” Larsson admits, “I want it so much/LA state of mind/I’m never satisfied/‘Cause I want number one/Doesn’t everyone?”

She also channels some of Olivia Rodrigo’s “jealousy jealousy” sentiments when she says, “Compared myself to others, like/Scrolling up and down my phone/What does she have that I don’t?” Naturally, this is a query that so many female pop stars (whether aspiring or already famous) ask themselves. Especially the “fringe” ones, including the likes of MARINA, who has her own song about Hollywood (called just that), during which she laments, “Hollywood infected your brain/You wanted kissin’ in the rain” and “Living in a movie scene/Puking American dreams/I’m obsessed with the mess that’s America.”

So, too, is fellow “foreigner” Larsson, who pronounces, “My dreams so big, they’re supersize [as is everything American, with this also being a McDonald’s reference]/I chase them like I chase the light/I could live a simple life.” Alas, she craves the kind of love that only mass adoration can give, admitting (in the style of The Stone Roses saying, “I wanna be adored”), “I wanna be loved, loved, loved.”

In terms of the unspoken “race against time” that every woman pursuing pop stardom (or just about anything else that’s “public-facing” in entertainment) is aware of, Larsson alludes to her age on “Saturn’s Return.” Yet it’s not done in a self-deprecating way, but rather, a self-accepting, “found my inner peace” kind of way (which is in slight contrast to how Ariana Grande wields her own “saturn’s return interlude” on Eternal Sunshine).

So it is that Larsson, now approaching twenty-nine (she’ll be twenty-eight in December) fittingly offers a track that incorporates what is, for many, the dreaded return of Saturn. Which is why Diana Garland, the astrologer Grande quotes via her “saturn’s return interlude,” notes of the phenomenon, “When we’re all born, Saturn’s somewhere and the Saturn cycle takes around about twenty-nine years. That’s when we gotta wake up and smell the coffee because if we’ve just been sort of relying on our cleverness or relying, you know, just kind of floating along, Saturn comes along and hits you over the head. Hits you over the head, hits you over the head, and says, ‘Wake up. It’s time for you to get real about life and sort out who you really are.’”

Larsson does just that as she sings to the tune of this whimsical, mystical-sounding track, a powerful mid-tempo number that gives her the opportunity to really belt out her vocals at times. And, while others might wish to stay young forever, Larsson is grateful for the wisdom that comes with age, singing, “The more I experience/The more mysterious it gets/Better let it unfold/‘Cause I’m not young enough to know everything anymore/Anymore [this being a clear acknowledgement of how youths, in all their arrogance, insist that they know everything]/And it feels so good to know I don’t know what I’m doing/And I love that I’m free in my naivety, I won’t lose it/Could be wrong/Could be right/But this song is mine.” The “song” in question not just being literally “Saturn’s Return,” but also the proverbial hymn that is her life.

She also reflects on how far she’s come since the days of being an impatient teenager (when she first started out in the business), recalling, “When I was seventeen/I didn’t have no patience/Said by twenty I’d be fillin’ up stadiums/Didn’t happen, so I changed the deadline [another testament to the slog]/Might take another twenty years, and that’s fine/Ain’t the concept of time so crazy?/We were just kids, now my friends are having babies/Got me thinking, like, I want that too/Damn, that’s new.” And yes, those last few lines very much serve up some Charli XCX expressions on Brat’s “I think about it all the time.”

With her sense of self completely affirmed on “Saturn’s Return,” Larsson makes it known that a healthy relationship can only really be had when you do know yourself well enough to let another person in on the “real” you. This is made apparent on the closing track of Midnight Sun, “Puss Puss.” Which, again, is Swedish for “kiss kiss” (further proving Larsson’s Swedish love throughout the record). And for anyone who’s irritated by the “no, you hang up!” couple, “Puss Puss” might not exactly “hit.” But it will for those who can appreciate the mushiness of such sentiments as, “Call you in my car/Down Hollywood Blvd., oh, boy, I’m a star/Come through, get on a plane/It’s in our s-e-x, pick you up at LAX/Puss puss/But I don’t wanna hang up” and “Puss puss/So wet under these bedsheets/Talk to you in Swedish/Mwah/Puss puss/Oh, I love you talking me through it/Kissing me over the phone.”

To be sure, “Puss Puss” (said in a manner that’s reminiscent of Katy Perry saying, “Swish swish” on the track of the same name) is probably the ultimate phone sex song thus far, and Larsson really should be applauded for such an achievement in that rare musical category. Especially considering that actual phone calls among her generation aren’t exactly common. But when you’re as much of a jet-setter as Larsson, the phone (whether FaceTime or “audio only”) is the lone source of sustaining a connection with one’s object of affection—in this case, her boyfriend, Lamin Holmén.

Yet even though it’s an overt love song to him, “Puss Puss” functions as a tender goodbye to her Midnight Sun listener, insisting that she doesn’t really want to leave them, but that they’re sure to talk (a.k.a. “commune”) again soon. Whether through Larsson’s Midnight Sun Tour or the next album she inevitably releases.

Having kept it short and sweet (no Sabrina Carpenter allusion intended) at a taut ten tracks, Larsson proves that there is, indeed, a certain kind of intelligence and aptitude required to be “frothy.” What’s more, she also makes good on her aforementioned statement, “I really am proud of my Swedish pop heritage, so I wanted to write about a Swedish summer where the sun never goes down. I wanted the whole album to feel like it’s a summer night and it never ends. And it doesn’t matter if it’s December: the summer night will be there for you. It’s waiting for you, it will come back for you, and you will come back for it.”

That, too, is most definitely the case with Midnight Sun, as listeners are sure to come back for it again and again, and be transported to a Lisa Frank-esque landscape where good times are as important as self-reflection and feeling connected to nature.