Singer Zara Larsson rejects a Best New Artist push after 13 years of records

Zara Larsson has spent thirteen years making records, and does not want an award category that describes her as new. The Swedish singer told Perfect Magazine that her former label had looked into submitting her for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards, and that her answer was no.

"I don't even want that," she said of the idea, adding that it would downplay her 13 years of being an artist and that she is not a new artist. The label in question was Epic Records, her home for more than a decade until she signed with RCA Records in July 2026. It is not clear when the internal discussion happened.

The friction is a familiar one for artists whose commercial peak arrives long after their debut. Larsson released her first single in 2013 and has charted repeatedly since, but 2026 was the year the attention consolidated, driven by Midnight Sun, her fifth album, and by "Stateside", her single with PinkPantheress. A category built for arrivals does not describe that shape well.

She offered a replacement term of her own. "That's why I like 'breakthrough'," she said, describing the sensation of the whole world looking at once, where before one song had worked in one place and another song a year later somewhere else. Now, she said, it feels like it is all coming together.

Asked how she measures success, she moved the conversation away from awards entirely, saying what she cares about is people coming to her shows and that the ultimate version would be a stadium world tour. What has struck her about the current album, she said, is the culture that has formed around it: the outfits, the flowers, the glitter and the colours the audience wears to the gigs.

There is a practical footnote to all of it. Larsson was already a Grammy nominee before this conversation began, which under Recording Academy rules disqualifies her from Best New Artist regardless of what she or Epic wanted. The full eligibility question is set out separately, and the wider pop awards season is tracked on award watch.

Her objection stands on its own terms anyway. The Best New Artist field has for years included acts with substantial back catalogues, and the argument for renaming it, or adding a category that recognises a late breakout, resurfaces every autumn. Larsson has now made the case from inside it.

She is also not the only artist taking issue with how the Academy sorts its categories this year. BTS said they would not submit music after a new Asian music category was announced, which followed the Academy's own move to rethink the Best Asian Pop category.