She sings like Rihanna, dances like Beyoncé and shoots from the hip on Twitter. If anyone is set for pop star success in 2017, surely it is Zara Larsson.
Having won Sweden’s answer to Britain’s Got Talent aged 10, history suggests she should have had some kind of public meltdown by now. Instead the 19-year-old, below, has clocked up a billion Spotify streams, picked a fight with rapper Chris Brown on Twitter and released her international debut, So Good, to huge acclaim.
Backed by a full band and dance troupe, she came to west London for her first headline show in the capital. It’s fair to say that anyone who headed to Shepherd’s Bush in search of experimentation would have left disappointed. Larsson trades in tried-and-tested sounds: the dancehall-inspired grooves of Rihanna (Lush Life); the uplifting, urban pop of Jess Glynne (So Good). On Don’t Let Me Be Yours, a guitar-led co-write with Ed Sheeran, she even segued into his Shape Of You.
If that created the impression of an artist in thrall to her contemporaries, there was no knocking the quality of the performance. A brilliant dancer and powerful singer, Larsson ticks all the pop star boxes. In I Would Like and Ain’t My Fault, she has songs to convert even the most devout pop-haters. On her recent number one with Clean Bandit, Symphony, she missed her cue before the chorus and, for a second, looked vulnerable. But Larsson quickly recovered: the child star who’s already an old pro and primed, perhaps, to become the Scandi Beyoncé.
