A pop star keeps accidentally going viral with decade-old songs. It has saved her career.
- - A pop star keeps accidentally going viral with decade-old songs. It has saved her career.
Kelsey WeekmanFebruary 5, 2026 at 2:00 AM
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Despite the irrevocable dreariness of winter, a song that sounds like pure summer is ascending the charts, approaching 2 billion streams on Spotify. With its bouncy, island-pop beat, “Lush Life” is as high-energy and buoyant as its singer, Zara Larsson, who dresses like a Lisa Frank-inspired Malibu Barbie.
What’s even weirder is the fact that “Lush Life” was first a hit in 2016, and it’s not the first of Larsson’s decade-old songs to make a comeback. What’s going on here?
The pop singer’s career renaissance, which now includes a Grammy nod and a much-lauded performance at the ceremony’s pre-show, is largely thanks to TikTok. The app’s ability to turn a song into a smash hit is well-documented, but the pop stars randomly selected by the algorithm to have this kind of resurgence are rarely able to capitalize on their 15 minutes of fame. Larson, however, is determined to turn her viral luck into something more enduring.
Who is this person and why are her older songs trending?
Larsson belongs to the class of mid-tier pop star whose songs you definitely recognize, although her face and name may escape you — she’s more than a one-hit wonder, but far from a household name. Her big break came in 2008, when, at 10 years old, she won Sweden’s version of Got Talent. She immediately got a record deal, and as she entered her teenage years, put out a number of hits, including “Ruin My Life” and “Never Forget You.”
Zara Larsson at the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards. (Jamie McCarthy/WireImage via Getty Images) (Jamie McCarthy/WireImage via Getty Images)
“I had amazing people who were helping me and have always listened to me, but being 14 in a room full of 40-year-olds, it’s kind of impossible to experiment and find out who you are,” she told i-D in 2026. Unsure of what she really wanted her identity and career to look like, Larsson fizzled out, until — completely randomly — a TikTok meme made her relevant again.
In August 2024, a TikToker posted a video of several Lisa Frank-style dolphin images set to Larsson’s song with Clean Bandit, “Symphony,” with the caption “I’m depressed.” The irony of the upbeat visuals and song and the downbeat messaging became a meme, and other users began sharing similar posts set to “Symphony” with captions like “I have social anxiety” and “I want to give up with my whole life.”
Instead of ignoring the trend’s absurdity, Larsson embraced it by posting her own version with the caption “What the f*** is happening.” Her video’s popularity transcended that of the original, and she began using dolphin imagery at her concerts and embracing a more beachy style, to better match the meme. She released a new song with this aesthetic, “Midnight Sun,” in June 2025, which earned her enough buzz to open for Tate McRae on her Miss Possessive tour, sparking a full resurgence in the U.S. Larsson then embarked on her own tour for her new Midnight Sun album. The single earned her a dedicated cult following of superfans and is now at its highest position ever on the Billboard Hot 100.
Larsson’s song “Lush Life,” similarly, first came out in 2015, and spent weeks slowly rising to its peak at No. 75 on the charts in August 2016. Nearly a decade later, in November 2025, a video of a teenage fan enthusiastically performing the song’s choreography on stage with Larsson went viral, launching it back into the zeitgeist, where it has once again begun to climb the charts. The dance is now a TikTok trend, and it’s at No. 40 on the Hot 100, a new peak position. According to data that TikTok shared with Yahoo, posts using “Lush Life” have exceeded 14.5 billion total views. Following in the path of other pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter and Role Model, who have honed the art of the viral concert stunt, Larsson too brings a fan on stage with her at every show, driving tons of views and chatter on social media.
Larsson is now working on a deluxe edition of her album Midnight Sun that’s due out in March, and in October, released her biggest hit yet — a collaboration with the internet darling PinkPanthress called “Stateside.” In the music video, Larsson acknowledges the popularity of her colorful Y2K aesthetic by swapping it with PinkPanthress’ plaid-infused, British one. Her initial nostalgia-driven resurgence might have been a fluke, but her comeback is real.
What does this mean for pop music?
Larsson has recovered from her flop era, a term used to describe the dreaded experience of trying but failing to reclaim your glory days. Dozens of other once-famous pop stars could only dream of the kind of renaissance Larsson has mounted. Working so hard to break out can be seen as cringe, but since Larsson’s entire resurgence was absurd, audiences don’t see her as a try-hard.
"I’ve already had success and then my ‘flop era.’ And then it’s like, ‘ok, I flopped.’ So, it doesn’t scare me anymore,” Larsson told ABC News in December.
Chimene Mantori, the founder of a music influencer talent agency, tells Yahoo that Larsson didn’t exactly fail — she plateaued. But the way the singer handled it could be a blueprint for other artists hoping to finally break out.
“I think audiences are quick to label quiet periods in artists’ careers as 'flops,' but music careers aren't linear — they're cyclical, especially in the modern day, where a TikTok trend can suddenly revive a dormant song,” Mantori explains. “She's let the audience dictate her direction rather than self-rebranding. She didn't overexplain, she didn't distance herself from memes — she took the moment and ran with it.”
Zara Larsson performs onstage at "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest" 2026. (Gilbert Flores/Penske Media via Getty Images) (Gilbert Flores/Penske Media via Getty Images)
A number of singers have broken out of the so-called “Khia Asylum” — that’s internet parlance for a lower tier of pop stardom where celebrities are seen as desperately striving for cultural relevance. They toil away putting out music and performing until they find the right combination of good music, iconic style and algorithmic luck to catapult them to stardom. Sabrina Carpenter did it with her bombshell rebrand on Short n' Sweet, Chappell Roan managed it with her embrace of drag aesthetics and undeniable musical prowess with “Good Luck Babe,” and Charli xcx had a monumental career breakthrough with her balance of hard-partying and vulnerability on Brat.
They can now welcome Larsson into their ranks. She’s now surpassed 50 million monthly Spotify listeners, and she’s not losing momentum. Imagine what she could do when her music and aesthetics actually match the weather outside.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
