More than a decade after the release of Lush Life, which became one of the biggest songs of the 2010s, Zara Larsson is having another moment. Not only is that single racing back up the charts after going viral on TikTok, but Larsson is also making commercial inroads alongside PinkPantheress on a remix of her song Stateside, which we first heard last year.
This is taken from PinkPantheress’s Fancy Some More? collection, which sees her reimagining her 2025 mixtape, Fancy That, alongside a roster of other artists. In fact, Larsson’s version of Stateside was one of four to be created for the album, so she says that, at one point, she feared that it might not make the cut.
The collaboration came about shortly after Larsson had sent PinkPantheress a DM expressing her admiration. Her timing was fortuitous: not only did the British star quickly respond, but she also asked the Swede if she wanted to be involved in Fancy Some More?
“She was like, ‘I’m doing this remix album. Are you down to do a song?’ I was like, ‘Yes,'" Larsson tells People.
After that, things happened very quickly. "It was cute, boom boom boom boom boom, wrote my verse, sent it in,” says Larsson. However, after she learned that Kylie Minogue had a version on the album, she started to worry that hers wasn't going to be included.
"I got really scared, like, 'Oh my God, what if she hated it? I thought she liked it,'" says Larsson. "But then it turned out she had, like, a million people on the remixes, which I think is actually a really fun way to do it."
There are indeed a lot of other artists on Fancy Some More?, but not only is Larsson’s version of Stateside proving to be the biggest reworking of that song - as well as Minogue’s, there are also versions involving Bladee and Groove Armada - but it’s also turning out to be the album’s standout commercial hit. A video was released on 15 January, and since then Stateside has gone global, with the clip racking up more than 13 million views already.
"People seem to like it, which makes me really excited," Larsson says.
PinkPantheress, meanwhile, has admitted that she originally thought that Larsson might be better suited to appearing on a different song. And even after Larsson had recorded her parts - using the original version of Stateside as a guide - she felt like something wasn't quite hitting the spot.
Describing that version to Billboard as "less pop, a bit more alternative," PinkPantheress explained her reaction to hearing Larsson's contribution. "I remember hearing at the time and thinking like, it's cool, but I feel like I could find something that did her more justice.
Her thoughts turned to an early version of Stateside that she'd made with producer Oscar Scheller. "I remembered that we made a demo version and I was like, 'let me put her vocals on this instead.' And then it just made so much more sense. It sounded so much more bubblegum and cute and like, 'Bratz', and I just felt like it fit her world a bit more."
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