My Music Moments: Zara Larsson Shares the Soundtrack to Her Life

The song/album that reminds me of childhood: It’s actually a Swedish artist. Her name is Carola, and she was my first idol ever. She sings in Swedish, so I really connected with that and, later on, I found out about international artists and stuff. I don’t know if you guys watch the Eurovision Song Contest, she won that in Sweden at 16, so she started out very young. But that was in the ’80s, so she was well in her career when I was young. I just thought she was the coolest person ever and I wanted to be just like her…I always said, “I will never do a song in Swedish,” but then I had a late-night concert that was shown on Swedish television [when] we had no live shows this summer. I invited her as a guest because I was like, “This is my first idol. I would love you to be on it.” She said yes. We did a song together. People were like, “You should release that song.” So we did and it’s one of her biggest hits. It blew up in Sweden, like strangely huge. So that was really cool for me.

The first album I remember buying: Probably Back to Basics with Christina Aguilera. I just saw the album cover, and I thought she looked so beautiful. It was at the time where you could go into a record store and actually listen to the album, they had headphones and you could hear the tracks. “Hurt” was on that album and me and my mom, we saw the video for that song and we just cried so much…I remember so well the first time seeing it. She always goes back to that video when she wants to cry. But that one, I remember buying it myself. My mom was really nice to me and bought me a lot of CDs, but that one I got for myself with my money.

The song/album people might not expect me to love: My two main categories when I listen to my Spotify, it’s rap and hip hop and Afrobeats. I really like J Hus. He’s my favorite artist, I think. One of them, for sure. And then I really like Burna Boy and WizKid. I’ve had WizKid on my tracks, I hope people know that I like him. I really, really love him. I really do listen to everything. A lot of people say that, but I really enjoy everything except for death metal, I would say. My dad loves that, so I’ve heard a bit of that as well.