The single & video are available now
Global pop powerhouse Zara Larsson kicks open the door to her brazen new era with “Pretty Ugly” via Sommer House/Epic Records. The electro-blasted single and its gloriously messy music video lean all the way into the idea that — as Zara sings — “sometimes a girl don’t wanna be well-behaved.”
The new song arrives ahead of Zara’s fourth international album — coming later this year— and follows the news that she’ll be hitting arenas across North America in August and September on Tate McCrae’s Miss Possessive Tour.
“Pretty Ugly” was written by Zara alongside MNEK, Helena Gao, and Margo Wildman, and produced by Margo XS and MNEK. It fittingly feels made to turn arena grounds into mosh pits. Low-slung electro and iconic ’90s house keys power Zara’s swaggering verses, but the chorus explodes with a confident shout-along hook over a blown-out beat: “Have you ever seen a pretty girl get ugly like this? / Messy like this? / Losing her shit?” It’s an open embrace of “bad” behavior summed up by the line, “Fuck the ladylike, more like crazy-like.”
The “Pretty Ugly” music video, directed by Charlotte Rutherford (PinkPanthress, Charli XCX, Ashnniko), and choreographed by Zoi Tatopoulos (FKA Twigz), brings that rowdy energy to life as Zara pulls up barefoot in a retro VW to an open field full of women stretching. When she flips a switch on a huge wall of speakers, the bass blows her back and she arises in formation with the girls — but their cheer-tight choreography soon devolves into something far more fierce, feral, and mud-caked as rain pours down and chaos reigns.
Last year, she released her lauded album Venus — a powerful showcase of her elevated sound, eclectic style, and unifying vision. Not to mention, her single “Symphony” with Clean Bandit repenetrated the culture with a boisterous meme moment that has helped the video achieve over 1.3 billion views, as the song topped the TikTok Billboard chart for several weeks. It’s kismet then that Zara’s forthcoming, much anticipated body of work channels the popstar at her most unfiltered and authentic. The album is her true essence, capturing lightening in a bottle in a way that only she can. “Pretty Ugly” then is completely undeniable, as Zara looks to the future, boldly and loudly setting off her most exciting chapter yet with a firecracker.
