We all make mistakes, and Zara Larsson has opened up about one she certainly wishes she could take back.
Appearing on the latest episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, the Swedish pop star spilled the tea on her “messy” teenage era and told the story of a time she kissed her “best friend’s boyfriend” at a New Year’s Eve party.
“He was flirting with me all night, and I was really interested in his friend,” she said, recalling that it was the end of the night at a house party and they were all pretty drunk. “Everybody was already downstairs, we were going somewhere else, and then he started kissing me. And I just kissed him back, because I was messy like that. I was 16 and really drunk.”
Now, I’m sure you’re wondering where her friend was while all this was going on. And it sounds like she wasn’t there, but that didn’t stop her from finding out about the kiss pretty quickly.
“The fucked up thing about this, though, was that the girl whose [house] we’d had the party at, she filmed it, and I didn’t know,” Zara revealed. “So before I got the chance to tell my friend what happened the next day, she had already got the video sent to her.”
Zara, now 28, doubled down on the fact that she wasn’t “in love with” or even really that interested in the guy, and called the whole thing a “weird, unforgivable mistake.” But, as you’d expect, the fallout was still incredibly messy. “She just cut me off, and all my friends just cut me off. I was just like a floating piece of trash in the universe,” the singer explained. “She didn’t speak to me for four years. She cut me off. She meant that shit.”
Years passed, her friend eventually forgave her, and now they’re on “good terms.” But Zara still remembers it as one of her “worst mistakes in life,” saying: “If I could take it back, I would, so, so, so bad. But I also have to forgive myself for it. Because, again, this is more than 10 years ago now, and I was just really stupid and messy. I also found out that I can’t drink. My morals and my sense of self, it just goes out the window. Now I just stick to the edibles.”
Well, at least something good came from the ordeal. It also partly inspired the song “Girl’s Girl” from her Midnight Sun album, meaning this actually isn’t the first time that Zara has talked about this story publicly. Notably, she told the messy anecdote while discussing her album on the Zach Sang Show last year, confessing that she was a “bad friend” at that time in her teens.
Anyhow, back to today, and the Call Her Daddy clip has been viewed over 8 million times on X, where a number of people are questioning why she’d publicly share a story that paints her in such an unflattering light. “She had the option to not tell this story,” read one X post with over 14,000 likes, while another similar comment joked that “batman himself couldn’t get this information out of me.”
However, not everyone has taken this stance. Others think Zara’s anecdote raises a more important point about the value of teenage mistakes and how we learn from them, with many highlighting the fact that the experience made her reevaluate her relationship with alcohol.
“The entire point of her sharing this story is as a cautionary tale to other young women (and men), and she’s brave to do so since it’s about a relatable mistake,” one Reddit user wrote on a thread discussing the clip. “Everyone has conflicts with friends as a teenager. Not everyone takes and learns the right lesson from it though.”
Someone else praised Zara for saying that she was eventually able to forgive herself. “She didn’t say it in an arrogant way. But in a manner in which you could tell she healed from it, made peace and resolution with it, and clearly learned from it in an impactful manner,” they wrote. “I feel like that’s fairly rare nowadays, especially with cancel culture and people constantly comparing themselves.”
So, I know what side of the debate I’m on, but what about you? LMK your thoughts in the comments. And, if you want, tell us a teenage mistake that you were able to learn from!