The night ’s Midnight Sun[1] dropped, the singer’s closest friends, collaborators (and even a few Katseye members) packed into a Los Angeles bar to watch her blow out candles as the album officially arrived. The Swedish midnight sun she sings about wasn’t shining, but Larsson was.
“I feel like I rarely do that,” she tells Rolling Stone the following morning. “I am so bad at celebrating milestones and accomplishments. I don’t even like celebrating my birthday. It was nice to come together in a room and remind ourselves that we made it.”
Midnight Sun has reignited Larsson’s pop stardom in ways beyond even her own imagination. Nearly a decade after “Lush Life” and “Never Forget You” first launched her onto the global stage, the Swedish star is stepping into a new era. At 27, Larsson is reveling in long-overdue recognition — and finally basking in the spotlight her fans always knew she deserved.
A Rolling Stone review[2] of the album gave it four stars, lauding it for “refusing to ever slow down, instead trafficking in high-energy dance-pop joy.” Larsson admits to me that she read the review, and seeing the positive reception for the record has put a smile on her face — even if she isn’t allowing critical acclaim to dictate her happiness.
“I used to search my name on Twitter, and Google my name… This time, I, of course, want people to love it just as much as I do, but I am so proud of it. I’m really happy about this body of work,” she says. “I just have confidence in what we’ve created and how it feels for me, but it does feel great to have that sense of accomplishment validated.”
It’s been a long time coming. Pop stans will argue the rollout for Midnight Sun — inspired by the endless summer evenings in her native Sweden — began more than a year ago, even if it wasn’t Larsson’s doing. Last summer, TikTok users revived her Clean Bandit collab “Symphony[3],” pairing it with surreal clips of dolphins flying through a Lisa Frank–like world. The posts were bizarre, but they put Larsson back in the pop conversation. And as she rolled out the new album, she leaned into that momentum, weaving it into a vibrant aesthetic defined by ultra-bright palettes and a Y2K-inspired, optimism-soaked style that matched the summery spirit of the project she’s made.
It’s been an impressive last year for Larsson, who spent the summer going viral for her performances and bubbly personality, reintroducing fans to a pop star fully in her element — giddy to deliver the full pop persona, no holds barred. She just wrapped an opening slot for Tate McRae[4], where her choreography-packed performances shot through TikTok every night, and she’s gearing up for her own tour. First, she’ll fill arenas across Europe and then hit Jingle Ball in the U.S. before a massive 2026 run that promises to make the Midnight Sun era burn longer and brighter.
Some of the songs on Midnight Sun reflect an introspective side of Larsson, who goes from partying on “Pretty Ugly” and Crush” to speaking her truth about grappling with the ideas of success on “Saturn’s Return” and “The Ambition.” She says with a giggle: “It’s playful and fun, and also it has layers to it.”
From the back of an SUV in Los Angeles, Larsson breaks down five of her favorite tracks from the new album, describes how she got Tiffany Pollard to re-record one of her most viral memes, and explains why turning 27 might have changed her brain chemistry.
Midnight Sun
The title track sets the tone of the album. It’s melodic. It’s dance-y. It has this Jersey Club beat. I always wanted to write a song called “Midnight Sun.” I just loved the symbolism of it. I’ve tried it for five times and nothing really stuck. But, this time around, we fucking made it work. That was one of the first songs that we did for the project where it felt, “Oh, okay, this is definitely something.” And, on the same day, we did “Pretty Ugly,” so we were, like, “Huh, this is a fucking success. This is the energy right now. This is my album. This is what it’s going to be.” I’m just so happy about it and how it turned out. I finally have my perfect midnight sun song.
Eurosummer
I like this being like a Eurovision song, like 2012 Romania or something. Do you remember “Mr. Saxobeat” by Alexandra Stan? Or “Hot” by INNA? It’s that Eastern European, almost Mediterranean vibe of just summer to me. The accordion, I just wanted to play with that because that to me is summer, and it’s nostalgic and it’s fun. I think that’s something that is just a part of who I am as a person and why I thought it was important to like, “How can I put my identity more into this album?” It’s camp. It’s fun. It’s silly, but so entertaining. I’m not going to be a part of Eurovision, but I can flirt with it. We take Eurovision so, so, so seriously. When people come over to Europe and have like a Eurosummer, it’s usually in the southern part of Europe, but it could also be in a tourist town in Croatia. It feels like me 10 shots in, me going to Turkey being 16. That’s also Eurosummer for me.
Hot & Sexy
“Hot & Sexy” is the bridge between “euphoric and fun” and “introspective” on the album because it’s about going out with your girlfriends, having a good time, being a bad bitch, looking good, and just being hot and sexy, feeling yourself, feeling, like, “Oh, yes.” And then we mashed that song with another song that we wrote earlier called “Let The Girl Live,” which is just about like, “Can a woman just live? Like, oh, my gosh, why do people have so many opinions? We want to be hot and sexy.”
The fact that Tiffany Pollard is on it is so iconic to me because she’s literally the internet. To me, she’s the ultimate queen of reality TV and giving you a read just effortlessly. I remember MNEK played me this track, and I was, like, “Oh, no, this is too good.” We just like hit her up and asked her if she wanted to come to the studio and just re-record it, And she was, like, “Yeah, I’ll come.” She was so cute and lovely. It’s not even a sample from Big Brother UK. It’s a re-recording of that iconic segment. She’s in the studio with her headphones and just, like, “Beautiful, fly, hot, sexy, thank you.” Ten minutes, in and out, we were, like, “Amazing.”
The Ambition
I feel like I’ve always been super open and honest about, like, “I want to be a superstar. I want to have a big stage, and I want to have a big production.” And if it’s not happening now, then it will just happen later because I will keep releasing albums and songs and do what I love. In “The Ambition,” I’m like, “Will it ever really, truly be enough, or will my goalpost just keep changing?” I’m at a point where maybe the most important thing in my life isn’t to travel around and around and around and around. Maybe it’s about settling down, which is something I never thought of being a teenager. Like, “Wait. Maybe I want a family, and maybe I don’t want to just be on the road all the time. Maybe I want to have stability and settle down,” which is like kind of a scary thought because, if I’m not a pop star, then what is my purpose? I don’t know. And that’s Ok. Life changes. And, in a way, that’s the beautiful thing about it. It’s not supposed to be static. Sometimes you ask: “Life is so long. Am I a failure if I abandon my dream or if it becomes something else?” I feel like I know myself as a person a lot more now than when I was 20 or 17. I know more who I am. My roots are deeper, but then also that can maybe allow my leaves to change. To be clear: I think I’m going to be singing forever just because I just love to sing. That’s my passion, but there’s also so much more to life.
Saturn’s Return
That one was the last song we made for the album. We were really supposed to finish. Margo, Helena, MNEK, and Zhone, we were just like, “Look, guys, we’re all here. Shouldn’t we just like make a song? Come on.” At that point, I was obsessed with the moon. I was reading about star signs and stuff, which I’m not really involved in, but, at that point, I was, like, “No. I feel something is shifting. I feel something is changing.” Saturn’s Return is when the planet goes back to where it was by the time you were born, which takes 27 years, and just how that’s a way of really coming into adulthood. I truly feel like I have changed a lot. Something in me has shifted just over the past year in how I move with everything in my life. It has made me very just humble towards life and how I’m just open to a lot of things, new perspectives, and see things from different sides. I think a part of it is like surrendering to life while also trying to do the best you can and be the best version of yourself. Life takes you on a journey and you can never really predict what it’s going to be. And I don’t know what it’s going to be, and that’s kind of nice.
References
- ^ Midnight Sun (www.rollingstone.com)
- ^ Rolling Stone review (www.rollingstone.com)
- ^ Symphony (www.rollingstone.com)
- ^ Tate McRae (www.rollingstone.com)