Zara Larsson

In 2016, Larsson performed at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Euro Cup in France, where she performed the official song of the championship «This One's for You», which had a good commercial performance in Europe. On March 17, 2017, Larsson released her second studio album titled So Good, which was the first to be launched internationally and received great commercial success in the charts and sales. At the same time, she released her third studio album titled Poster Girl (2021), which was preceded by her international hit «Ruin My Life».

Zara Maria Larsson was born on December 16, 1997 at the Karolinska University Hospital in the municipality of Solna in Stockholm, as the first child of the marriage formed by Agnetha, a nurse, and Anders Larsson, a military officer. In an interview with Svenska Dagbladet, Larsson stated that she was born «dead» due to the lack of oxygen in the umbilical cord. She lived her first three years in Vasastan, a district in the center of Stockholm, and after the birth of her younger sister, Hanna, around the year 2000, the Larsson family moved to the area of Enskede, where she attended basic studies at the school Gubbängsskolan. Although she does not come from a musical family, she learned to sing at a very young age and used to perform in musical events at primary school.

Larsson became interested in music at an early age, as she often sang all the time and everywhere. The first musical artist who inspired her was Carola Häggkvist, after her mother gave her a CD of the singer. From then on, Zara began obsessively imitating Carola. She was then surprised by Whitney Houston after receiving as a gift the album Whitney: The Greatest Hits. She also stated that since she was five years old, she knew she wanted to become a «legendary immortal» like Elvis Presley.

When Zara moved to the third grade, she transferred to the Royal Swedish Ballet School and took contemporary dance classes until she was 15 years old. She then continued her studies at Kulturama, an art school in Stockholm. Larsson described that this new environment quickly made her aware of the facts in the world, the social problems, and the gender patterns, which came to influence her more and more as a public figure. In a 2015 interview, she stated that when she started high school, she was accepted into the Adolf Fredrik Music School, but she rejected the opportunity because she did not want to sing in a choir as she considered it uninteresting.