Blonde Affairs: Zara Larsson's Midnight Sun

Winter essential, plus the lip balm I've been using since 2007

Welcome to Blonde Affairs—a new recurring dispatch from the AB Office of Emergency Management, where we briefly cover a single blonde (“blonde” defined here) whose recent moves have rendered them a matter of civic relevance.

Blonde Affairs will hit your inbox on Saturday mornings from here on out.

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The yearly descent into winter is an unbearable experience for me. It has only gotten worse since my Miami stint. What do you mean it’s too cold to go on a nice long walk? What do you mean I’m going to lose all sun on my skin until I look like a cadaver? Literally, WHAT is the point of winter. I hate it. If you, like me, are stressed about how you’re going to get through the next 2.5 months of this shit season… at this particularly freaky time in history no less… well:

What if I told you that there is a pop album that will instantly reverse your doom and gloom?

Look no further than Swedish pop star Zara Larsson’s fifth studio album, MIDNIGHT SUN (2025).

A still from the music video for the album’s most successful of its three singles, the eponymous “Midnight Sun.”

I do commend her perfectly uneven spray tan.

The video is aesthetically bizarre! Zara is 27, a Zillennial, so what we get is a Gen Z mood board version of the 2000s that reallyyy tries to pour on the sleaze. All the signifiers are there: her AA booty shorts with the bikini strings peeking out; a cherry graffiti tee; polymer jewelry; long blonde extensions. She’s swimming through waves that turn into sky-bound hearts, nodding at Flash animation-era digital art. She literally rhymes “low rise” with “tan lines.” It’s all glossy and oversaturated in a way that makes it feel sterile. Perhaps this is due to her Nordic sensibility, some inherent lack of friction. Whatever. I don’t begrudge her. The song bangs. And the rest of the album delivers on the delectable sleaze this video hints at, but can’t quite capture.

There are ten nearly perfect pop songs on this album.

• “Midnight Sun” is about an endless summer night.

• “Blue Moon” is about an ideal, but fleeting, love.

• “Pretty Ugly” is about being hot and going inappropriately nutso.

• “Girl’s Girl” is about wanting your best friend’s man.

• “Crush” is about being crushed by your crush while your boyfriend’s mad at you.

• “Eurosummer” is about a Euro summer fling, with a hook that recalls the 2011 smash, Mr. Saxobeat.

• “Hot & Sexy” is a vogue-y song about… being hot and sexy.

• “The Ambition” is about being an ambitious biatch! Zara is a proud member of the Beyhive, which feels important to note.

• “Saturn’s Return” is about being 27 and confused.

• “Puss Puss” is about wanting someone who lives somewhere else, while being on your grind in LA.

“Puss Puss” means “kiss kiss’ in Swedish— the more you know. On the whole, it’s an impressively cohesive album, and a deliriously catchy 31 minutes and 58 seconds!

I like when words in songs make sense— I like songwriters— so I love that every song on this album can be explained, concept-wise, in under a sentence. Why is Taylor considered a great songwriter? Because her songs are narratively legible. So much of the pop genre runs on vibes alone that when a story actually clicks in three minutes or less, it can feel… miraculous to me! All these songs succeed here. And unlike Tay, there isn’t a sad song on the album (I’d call “Saturn Return” pensive, at best). The emotional through line of Midnight Sun isn’t heartbreak, nor is it that dead-eyed oblivion of Pussycat Pop I wrote about in February: it’s restless desire… appetite…momentum!

Try to listen to this album without a Roman candle of dopamine exploding inside your brain. I dare you! Don’t worry about me this January, Midnight Sun will be my first line of defense in keeping me safe from winter sadness.

Speaking of winter, I was going to make a single-product gift guide, but then decided nah, that’s not funny. But the item is actually also part of my winter survival plan, so I’m going to include an ode to it below…

You can see why this would have been a very silly standalone post…

Meet the light of my life, the Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Swivel Stick <3

I have been using this Palmer’s cocoa butter stick as my chapstick continuously since 2007. Eighteen years in, and I’ve never found a better or more delightful balm. I plan to use it until the end of time.

Everything about it is perfect. I love how soothing it is, I love how it’s the size of a glue stick, I love giving people a fright when they see me apply it. For eighteen years people have been going, “Ohmigoddd, I thought that was a glue stick!” Yeah you did! Try using a Chapstick or a little tiny tub of Carmex after you’ve gotten used to this big bad cocoa butter stick; everything in comparison will feel sad and wimpy. Do you remember “Whereeee’s the chapstick?” Well, you’ll never be in that situation if you use this, because the tubes are big, and easy to find.

I always had chapped lips as a child (“and as a pre-teen,” according to my sister when I texted her about this asking if she remembered- lmao). My lips would get so chapped I recall my mom resorting to bribery, promising to buy me something I wanted only if I agreed to remember to apply lip balm throughout the school day. Now, my lips are soft at all times… perhaps the cocoa butter stick saved me from a lifetime of looking like a hot mess. I feel naked leaving the house without it. I panic, worried the wind will chap my lips instantly, that I’ll have nothing at my disposal to stave off the burn!

If you weren’t already sold I need to remind you it is a COCOA BUTTER stick, meaning it smells amazing too. In my early 20s, I used to babysit a kid who had a million allergies and couldn’t eat any snacks except Lay’s Lightly Salted chips (an underrated chip— my preferred chip, actually). And sometimes he’d ask to hold my cocoa butter stick just to smell it, because he loved the smell, and couldn’t eat chocolate… </3

Spread the good word and pray Palmer’s never changes its formula. Enjoy your improved life with a cocoa butter stick in your purse, and implore those you love to stream Midnight Sun by Zara Larsson. Tell them it’s for their own good, so they make it through the winter. ✪