Zara Larsson is back in the review cycle with Midnight Sun: Girls Trip, the remix album Pitchfork just reviewed. The project lands after her original Midnight Sun struggled to make immediate waves in the U.S., then found new life through a remix tied to PinkPantheress and Alysa Liu.
Seven months earlier, Pitchfork gave Midnight Sun a semi-canonical 6.9. That score now sits beside a sharper commercial story: the Stateside remix pushed to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, and Lush Life returned to the chart after the attention shifted back toward Larsson.
Uncover to Midnight Sun
2013 is where the current arc starts, with Larsson's first proper single, Uncover, reaching Nordic No. 1. The contrast with the present is hard to miss. A Danish music fan at a conference in Denmark put it bluntly: “There are no classic songs,” before adding, “Zara Larsson is a classic.”
2015 brought Lush Life, the song that later reappeared on the chart after the Stateside remix gained attention. That return matters because it shows the remix cycle doing more than dressing up an old catalog track; it is creating a second pass at the market, and this one is moving enough heat to pull older Larsson material back into view.
PinkPantheress and Alysa Liu
This winter's Olympics added the most visible boost. Alysa Liu used PinkPantheress' Stateside remix with Zara Larsson for her Exhibition Gala skate after winning gold, and she asked in the routine, “Never met a Swedish girl, you say?” The line turned a niche pop remix into a wider cultural signal, then carried the track to the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
Last fall's original Midnight Sun was built on MNEK and Margo XS' bright, slightly cleaned-up take on hyperpop dance-pop, pushed toward maximalist, girly-bling glitter. That sound had not immediately broken through in the U.S., which is why the remix album now reads less like a side project and more like an attempt to turn a viral opening into durable pop attention.
Girls Trip review cycle
The new review gives Larsson another visibility pass at the exact moment the remix era is doing work the original album could not. She already has a fifth album, a song that climbed back onto the chart, and a remix that hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100; the business question now is whether Midnight Sun: Girls Trip keeps that momentum from fading into one-off virality.
For Larsson, the practical outcome is simple: the catalog is moving again, and the remix project is the proof. If the original album was treated as a muted U.S. arrival, the review cycle around Midnight Sun: Girls Trip suggests a better read is that the market found her through the remix first, then came back for the rest.
