Following up Charli xcx’s BRAT era – a self-replenishing cultural moment that seemingly forgot how to end – is a risky place for a pop artist to be. Just as “BRAT summer” finally began to cool down, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat – a re-rendering of the album through a revolving door of collaborators and sonic detours – arrived. PinkPantheress, ever the opportunist of an aftershock, followed with Fancy Some More? – her own twist on the “remix album” – with Zara Larsson’s flip on “Stateside” nudging both artists further into the mainstream churn. In that sense, Larsson’s Midnight Sun: Girls Trip feels less like a new chapter than a continuation of the same logic – pop as perpetual revision, a feedback loop, and as something that simply refuses to set. A never-ending midnight sun, indeed.

Where these adjacent remix projects still feel tightly marshalled by their auteurs – Charli xcx most notably, whose hand remains visible even as her songs splinter and refract – Larsson’s iteration feels far less governed, each feature veering off with enough personality to eclipse the person who sent the invite. On “Blue Moon,” Kehlani defaults to the slick, slow-creeping R&B that defines her recent output, subtly recentering the track around her own sensibilities. “Puss Puss” follows suit in a different register, with fellow Swede Robyn importing her stark, club-facing synth work – and a handful of self-referential nods to her latest LP, Sexistential – nudging the track further into her world than Larsson’s.

While this surrendering of authorship occasionally scans as a strategic retreat, it just as often plays to Larsson’s advantage. Girls Trip comes into focus less like a dilution of her voice and more like a loose, celebratory roll call – of her own recent momentum, sure, but also of the women currently animating pop’s upper tiers, the kind of artists who appear less like peers than permanent fixtures in her listening rotation. Take Eli for example, who flips “Crush” on its head with the same effervescent, Y2K guitar pop that defined her 2025 debut Stage Girl. The result tilts heavily in Eli’s favour, but her inclusion feels pointed – evidence of Larsson’s closeness to the scene that she’s drawing from, even when she isn’t fully steering it.

To call it a Girls Trip is to imply a knowing kind of hedonism – inside jokes, minor betrayals, the occasional overshare – and Larsson mostly leans into that mess rather than sanding it down. “The Ambition” with Madison Beer and BAMBII thrives on that looseness, its chopped-and-screwed digi-pop jittery with a sense of possibility that feels genuinely shared. “Girl’s Girl” with Emilia lets a little air out of the room, Larsson sidestepping the usual pop-solidarity script long enough to admit a pettier instinct – “Why we always gotta be cute and friendly?” – cuts deeper than any platitude. Drop the pretence of cohesion, let the concept misbehave, and Girls Trip earns its premise.