Zara Larsson refused to make ‘Ruin My Life’ a duet.
The 21-year-old pop star’s latest single was supposed to feature both a male and female voice but she didn’t want to follow ‘Never Forget You’ – which she collaborated on with MNEK – with something that sounded similar because she wants people to know who she is.
She told Billboard’s ‘Pop Shop’ podcast: "I didn’t want to do a duet, because the last time I did a song, my biggest one in America, that was a duet.
"I thought to myself, I just wanted to release a song, just me. If it’s going to be my single, I want people to know who I am.
" A lot of the times, people have heard my song, any of the singles, but not necessarily know who I am. If they see a picture of me, they don’t put two and two together. I wanted to put my face out there."
And Zara admitted she made a number of changes to the lyrics of the song because it was initially about an extremely "toxic" situation and felt "really tragic".
She explained: "When I looked at the lyrics, it felt really tragic — this passionate back-and-forth almost argument in the song.
"And now that we took away the guy, it was just a really, really sad girl. We switched up a few things — it talks about a toxic relationship, knowing someone isn’t good for you, but you really, really want this person back. That and the [original] topic of the song was a bit too much, and I’m very cautious about what I talk about.
"I felt that it was a great song, but I wanted to make it more emotionally sad than actual physical violence."
The Swedish singer was determined the accompanying music video was "glamorous" and stayed away from the obvious.
She said: "It was hard finding a concept for this video that wasn’t, like, me laying in bed crying over this guy.
"I didn’t want it to be that. I wanted it to be more glamorous."
Zara Larsson didn’t want another duet
