By Alyssa Boddicker
Eighteen year old Swedish pop sensation Zara Larsson‘s songs have been ringing in our heads nonstop recently. Her tracks ‘Lush Life‘, ‘Never Forget You‘ with MNEK, and her latest collaboration with Tinie Tempah, ‘Girls Like‘ got us curious… and we just wanted to learn more about this young girl with the powerful voice.
Funnily enough, Zara Larsson’s claim to fame, at least in Sweden, came much earlier in 2008 when she won ‘Talang‘, the Swedish version of Britain’s Got Talent, at the mere age of 10 with Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’. After being told she was too young to get a recording contract, she retreated into “normal” life until 2013 when she released her first EP called ‘Introducing‘. With the mega success of the EP’s single ‘Uncover‘ going certified Platinum by Universal Music Sweden, and the album becoming Triple Platinum later that year, Zara got signed to American label Epic Records. She released her debut studio album ‘1’ in 2014 where it proceeded to go Platinum in Sweden.
Her international success and our love for Zara Larsson took off after the release of ‘Lush Life‘, the debut single off her second studio album. Next she teamed up with Brit MNEK for ‘Never Forget You’, which hit #5 in the UK charts. Just this past month was the release of her collaboration with Tinie Tempah for the song ‘Girls Like‘. Here’s hoping there’s more British collabs in the future!
One of Zara’s more cheeky claims to fame is when she gained 50k Instagram followers in just one day after she posted a picture of a condom stretched to cover her entire lower leg up to her knee. She had seen others do this on Tumblr and thought it would entertaining to try herself. When asked her motives for this viral success, Zara had a very simple response. “I was like, ’I have to take a picture,’ because the thing that I was thinking was, ’Oh my gosh, all these guys think they’re too big to wear a condom.’ Like, ’You are lying! This is the proof,’ and then it just became this massive thing.”
Seeing as we can never get enough beauty, Zara’s newest collaboration ‘Play With Pop‘ with Clinique, which features four music videos of her songs “Lush Life“, each of which a remixed to mirror a different makeup look (bare, bold, sweet, vixen). We love this interactive campaign and can’t wait to try out the looks ourselves.
From her hit singles, to her collaborations in and out of the music industry, as well as her impending album, we have a feeling that Zara Larsson has just begun to make her international waves. Rest assured Zara, we’ll be sure to ‘Never Forget You’ and your Celine Dion beginnings when you make it big.
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