“I look crazy but this is what you get.” These are some of the first words Zara Larsson says when we connect via Zoom on a Tuesday evening in mid-September. The Swedish darling of pop has been on set all day and has just returned to her Los Angeles hotel room.

For the record, she doesn’t look crazy, but her signature long blonde mermaid waves are swept back so tightly it’s tricky to see where her makeup stops and her hair begins thanks to a halo of rock-hard glue used to secure a since-removed wig.

“I had to just jump straight on this call because the shoot that I was on just got... late, basically,” she says warmly. “I’m cool. I’m good.”

Zara wears Emily Watson, Tom Ford, Venuja, Fruity Booty, Falke, Phoebe Hyles for Nicol & Ford and Pandora.

Zara Larsson is, in fact, really good. The 28-year-old singer is smack bang in the middle of an epic tour schedule that has seen her perform at Lollapalooza in Berlin and Chicago, and Brazil’s Rock in Rio. All together she will play more than 100 dates in five continents. But if you’re a Larsson fan, you already know this: snippets of her on-stage dance routines consistently go viral on TikTok, where she is prolific. “I really like touring. I know a lot of artists don’t like it, they don’t like to be away from home or to do the same show again, again and again, but I really enjoy that,” she explains in her characteristically direct manner. “In a weird way, it’s like the strongest sense of a routine that I have, even though it’s a lot of travelling and different places.”

After LA, Larsson heads to New York, Columbia, Korea and Japan, before landing in Australia this month for a string of sold-out shows. Her next official break will be in November after her tour concludes in Thailand, where she plans to “just lay flat on the beach and drink out of coconuts”.

If it feels as though the name Zara Larsson is everywhere right now, that’s because it is. Just eight months ago, she was scheduled to support American pop-rock outfit, One Republic. “Now I’m doing the same venues that I was gonna open for them at. And that feels really, really incredible and fun, but also there’s something about the timing of it all. I just feel like everything has aligned so perfectly this year.”

If Larsson was teetering on the precipice of full-blown superstardom, she positively tipped over into it with the 2025 release of her fifth studio album, Midnight Sun. The Grammy-nominated title track, which has notched up more than 474 million streams on Spotify, is a love letter to her native Sweden and its endless summer light. It also demonstrates the full breadth of her beaming vocal range and is her first album since releasing her debut single, Uncover, at just 15 years old, where she’s in complete control, creatively.

When Midnight Sun was first launched, British songwriter and producer MNEK, who has collaborated with Larsson since she first stepped into his West Hollywood recording studio at the age of 17, waxed lyrical about Larsson in an Instagram post.

“I believe her talent has legs that will continue to last her in this industry. But I can confidently say this is finally a body (of work) for those legs to stand on,” he wrote.

“One of the reasons I love Midnight Sun as an album is I hear not only Zara’s gorgeous singing voice but her actual VOICE as the smart, vivacious, curious, hilarious and amazing dynamite of a human being I’ve been blessed to know her as all these years...”

By her own admission, there’s sometimes been a little less Larsson magic within her own albums and shows. “I feel like before, it was weird, I almost felt outside of my own projects a bit. And now I feel like I’m very involved. I think it’s hard to push for something so hard when you don’t connect with it as much,” she reflects.

Like anyone who has navigated the music industry for more than two decades, Larsson has felt the ebbs and flows of success. Her 2021 album, Postergirl, was met with a lukewarm response from critics and fans alike. Midnight Sun’s popularity, then, has felt reaffirming. “I think it [this album] gave me so much confidence in trusting myself and trusting what I like, because also when I did Midnight Sun—especially the song, but the album in its whole—I was just like, this feels so me, and I love this so much. I love this song, I love this video, I love the show that I made. I remember thinking, ‘If this doesn’t pop off, I will be confused’,” she says.

While Larsson is in complete creative control of the music she’s sharing with the world, less predictable is the path it will take once it reaches the depths of the internet. Late last year, her 2015 single Lush Life re-entered the charts after a video of a fan performing the song’s dance routine went viral.

Then there’s the dolphin meme craze. Not following? A quick refresher: in late 2024 people began posting whimsical imagery of vibrant dolphins and rainbows with deadpan confessions (think: “I’m depressed”). The trend was dubbed “reverse hopecore” and the song Symphony by Clean Bandit featuring Larsson’s smooth vocals became the backing track.

While other artists might have distanced themselves, Larsson leaned in. The Y2K-inspired dolphin motif became part of her brand (even Google is in on the joke: when you search her name, dolphin animations swim across the screen). And she is as smitten with social media as it is with her. “I think some artists, they’re just like, ‘F*ck this shit, I don’t wanna have to be an influencer and an artist, like I wanna write songs, I didn’t sign up to post myself on Tik Tok’, and I’m like, ‘Sign me up! I love it!’. I think it’s a part of my personality. It’s almost like a journal in a way.”

Bravely, she’s “obsessed” with reading comments and the instant feedback loop from her devoted fanbase. “I’m such an internet girl,” she says, admitting that if she wasn’t a world-famous singer she would still be as engaged online.

Zara wears Saint Laurent, Levante and Pandora.

On socials, on stage and IRL, Larsson has irrefutable main character energy. She’s glitter and dolphins, conviction and substance; a laser-sharp dreamer. From her aquamarine beauty looks to her high-energy performances, she spreads the type of joy, fun and confidence that comes from landing exactly where you’re supposed to in life. “I think maybe I felt a little bit embarrassed... to promote myself, and I think I’m just completely over that. Now I’m like, there’s no shame in promoting myself and my music and what I love,” she says.

Since Larsson can remember, life has been a stage. At just 10 she won Talang, Sweden’s equivalent of Got Talent, before joining the Royal Swedish Ballet School. “It was very girlhood. Like sisters,” she remembers. On Saturday nights after performing at the opera, all 25 ballet classmates would end up back at a friend’s house for a sleepover.

“I’m so lucky with the people that I grew up with,” says Larsson, who name checks her sister and her boyfriend, Lamin Holmén, a professional dancer and choreographer, as her current support network.

Ballet served as a creative outlet for Larsson’s boundless energy and, like many former dancers, she credits its structure with teaching her discipline.

“I feel like my personality type could have gone completely... wrong and started doing bad things for attention, or just to satisfy my... arghhh!” she says with self-awareness. “And I think dancing really calmed my brain and helped me a lot with life.”

Also helping to calm her brain: True Blood, the long-running vampire drama series she’s currently watching when she has a rare day off.

For now though, there aren’t many of them. Tomorrow, she’ll head downtown for our cover shoot, before returning to her happy place, the stage, for the next leg of shows. “I knew in my soul my whole life, I’m gonna make it. I’m gonna be an artist. I’ve never doubted myself. And even when things weren’t going super straight up, or the way I wanted it to go, or I’d release music and it wasn’t really taking off the way I wanted it to, I always knew in my heart that you just keep going, because one day it will happen,” she reflects, flashing a smile.

“I’m having so much fun, I feel strong, I feel healthy. I’m just really happy and I’m not really stressed in life. I feel very content, I feel very aligned and like, I’m proud of what I do.”

It seems that the rest of the world feels it, too.

Photography: Richie Talboy @okrichie @go__see

Styling: Isabella Mamas @isabellamamas

Editor and interview: Remy Rippon @remyrippon

Hair: Clayton Hawkins @claytonhawkins

Makeup: Jimmy Stam @jimmy_stam

Manicure: Juan Alvear @byjuanalvear

Tailoring: #susiekourinian

Set design: Terry Watson @ter.watson

Talent Direction & EP: Rikki Keene @rikki_keene

Production: @boomproductions @charlottemelissarose

A version of this article originally appeared on Glamour Australia.