“So Good” is like dancing with tears in your eyes. Zara Larsson, a 19-year old from Sweden who dropped her second album “So Good” on March 17, has a sound that makes you want to sit in a corner and bob your head. She talks about the process of getting into a relationship, and with everyone wanting to be #goals these days, this album dropped at the perfect time.
Her songs “TG4M” and “Only You” talk about the beginning of a relationship, and no, I do not mean when you meet someone. I am talking about preparing yourself for one. In these songs, she highlights her faults but says she is OK with herself regardless. Her message is that it is good to accept your flaws but to also realize that it is OK to be loved with flaws. It is OK to grow with someone.
More importantly, you have to have an overwhelming love for yourself. Loving yourself before someone else does is key, because once you enter a relationship, the person cannot be as intimate with you as you are with yourself. Every day, you meet yourself in the morning, and you have to decide to see a beautiful light before anyone else can. Your boyfriend or girlfriend will fall in love with you because you love yourself.
With “What They Say,” Larsson creates a melody that you can dance to at a wedding. In the song, Larsson transitions to being in the relationship where people are saying bad things about her to him/her. So she has a conversation with him/her, basically saying, “I know it is hard to ignore the world and what they are saying about me, but they are not me. Don’t call off what we have simply because people are talking.”
Many times in a relationship, people listen to what others say because they do not want to look dumb or be called blind, but only they know their partner personally and intimately. Sometimes, people do not want you happy because they are not happy, so they try to sabotage what you have. Being able to withstand people’s opinions about your relationship is crucial to you and your partner’s growth.
“Lush Life” is the potential bad side of a relationship: the end. This song has a catchy beat that makes you want to sway your upper body. It is about accepting that someone is not for you and moving on to enjoy your life. What matters after a relationship is finding your happiness and yourself again. Yes, you have to get over someone, but no, you do not have to stop having the time of your life. She relays this same message with “Never Forget You” and “Funeral.” These are incredibly beautiful, happy but bittersweet songs. They show that losing someone means accepting that it is going to hurt, that certain things should stay in the past; it’s about coming to peace with the situation.
Larsson does an amazing job of bringing up alternate scenarios in her songs. Being in a relationship has a potential upside as well: having someone forever. Nevertheless, sometimes only time and space can heal a relationship. Giving a relationship a pause if it’s not working in order to see if it is really meant to be is what true love is. It is about making a sacrifice.
This album does an incredible job of showing that many times, teens are well-educated when it comes to relationships, but you can never know enough.
Christian, 19, attends Georgia State University.
