The Swedish pop star Zara Larsson sat down with Joe and Jon to discuss her stratospheric year of taking control of her career and stepping into a new era of bonafide pop superstardom. She spoke about her surge in cultural relevance — from the TikTok resurrection of her 2015 hit “Lush Life” to her remix version of “Stateside” by PinkPantheress being skated to by gold medalist Alysa Liu at the 2026 Winter Olympics — as well as taking joyful music seriously, learning to embrace self-promotion and whether any amount of money is worth trading for being politically outspoken.
Popcast is The New York Times’s weekly pop culture chat show, with interviews and analysis from the critic Jon Caramanica and the reporter Joe Coscarelli.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.