Zara Larsson - So Good

The Guardian 60

(Epic)

Swedish singer Zara Larsson is a postmodern popstar. She’s like a Rihanna-doting teen gatecrashing a tropical house party, gun fingers blazing, and her sugar-soaked songs have had more than 1bn Spotify streams. Unlike the vetted chart artists of the 90s, she has social media accounts filled with political opinions and profanities, and her songs are imbued with honesty, too: “I don’t want to shower even if I stink / ’cos I don’t want to wash you off my skin,” she sings on Only You, a slowly lolloping, quasi-reggae track about masturbation in which she also proclaims: “No one’s ever touched me like I touch myself.”

The rubbery bounce of Lush Life – the sixth biggest track of 2016 – is naggingly catchy, and there’s also a lot of parody: dancehall track Sundown is pure Purpose-era Bieber. It just about works in 2017, but at a time when pop continually looks to the future, So Good is in danger of dating quickly.

The Guardian 60

(Epic/Record Company TEN)

As a pop star, 19-year-old Swede Zara Larsson is a refreshing proposition – a politically engaged feminist unafraid to upset the status quo. There are flashes of that big personality on second album So Good – the blunt, Rihanna-esque ode to sexual fulfilment, Only You; Make That Money Girl’s heartfelt celebration of female success – but a handful of its 15 tracks feel like an exercise in Spotify-friendly box-ticking. Sundown adds to pop’s current obsession with tropical house, while I Would Like is a good song without a proper chorus. But Larsson imbues each song with enough passion to see it over the line, tearing through gloriously OTT ballad Funeral, and finessing the Clean Bandit-assisted Symphony.