Zara Larsson was ordering room service in her Chicago hotel room when she picked up a small doll that had no name yet and decided she might carry it to the stage. Eight hours later, tens of thousands of people were screaming back every word of ‘Never Ending Midnight’ at Lollapalooza, one of the biggest performances of her summer. The window between those two moments is a portrait of what a decade of growth actually looks like on a pop star who was last here as a teenager.
The decade between the teenager and the woman
Larsson has played Lollapalooza before. She was there in 2017, and she was blunt about how much has changed since. ‘I feel like my voice is better. I feel like I have more fun actually. I feel more involved in my artistry and in my songwriting and in the making of the show,’ she said, watching the Chicago skyline from her hotel window. ‘And I think you can really, really tell.’ She said she hoped anyone in the crowd who was also there in 2017 would catch the difference, calling it ‘quite huge.’
The doll she picked up that morning was inspired by someone’s grandmother and had no official name. She decided it looked like her and floated the idea of bringing it onstage. The detail is small, but it captures something real about how Larsson operates: the show is constructed from genuine instinct rather than from a committee of handlers.
The outfit concept for the day was a crawfish, purple with orange details, sourced from her stylist’s Pinterest board. The Lollapalooza look landed on a striped cropped polo from Eurokco, flower-detailed shorts, midnight sun boots, moto gloves with a girls-trip theme, and what she described as an almost Hannah Montana energy. ‘I just think it adds like an element of pop star to the look,’ she said. Comfort is non-negotiable: she wants to be able to lift her arms all the way up and do a split without restriction, and she runs as little coverage as possible because she hates being hot under stage lights. On the makeup front, her glam relies on no primer and no setting spray, just a heavy layer of powder over naturally oily skin.
When the weather delay became the best news of the day
Minutes before Larsson was due to walk out, the whole timeline shifted. Rain moved across the festival grounds, causing weather delays and knocking Lil Uzi Vert off his scheduled set. Festival staff asked if she wanted to absorb his time slot, which ran directly after her own. She did not hesitate. ‘It literally could not have been better,’ she said from backstage. The extra time went into hair and makeup, a proper vocal warm-up, and, she suggested with a laugh, possibly a nap.
Larsson is also honest about the craft mechanics most artists leave unspoken. She keeps backing tracks minimal because she does not want perfection to erase the life of a live show. She noted that pitch correction on microphones is increasingly common, and while she uses it sometimes, she feels it can strip the soul out of a performance.
The crew that makes the stage appear
By the time Larsson walked down the stairs toward the stage, there was already applause waiting for her in the corridor. She stopped on the way out to acknowledge the backstage operation around her, the crew that ensures the set is built, the mic is live, and the lights fire on cue. ‘I just kind of show up and the stage is there,’ she said. ‘It definitely not like a one-woman show.’
Somewhere in the tour wardrobe hanging in that dressing room was a look she wore for an earlier Lollapalooza date in Berlin: a bright piece by a designer she credited simply as Barack, which he also made for her in pink, with a matching top.
The doll, still unnamed, never did get a formal introduction before the show started.
