Mick Jagger Points to Zara Larsson’s “Ruin My Life” as a Longstanding Favorite

Mick Jagger doesn’t often namecheck current pop artists, so when he does it lands with a certain weight. A clip played Friday on the Today show, during Zara Larsson’s Summer Concert Series set, showed Jagger answering a question about which newer acts he’s been listening to. His response was direct and a little personal. “My son said to me, ‘Oh, Zara Larsson is having a big comeback.’ I said, ‘But she never went away for me.’”

The song that started it for Jagger was “Ruin My Life,” the 2018 single that has now racked up over 600 million streams. He didn’t cite chart positions or viral moments. He just said, “When I’m in that mood, that’s what I like.” The phrasing suggests a track that has lived in his rotation long enough to become a specific kind of go-to, not a passing algorithm pick.

Larsson, visibly caught off guard by the video, told the hosts it was “so beautiful” to see. The moment arrived as she promotes Midnight Sun (Girls Trip), a remix album built from her 2025 Swedish-language release Midnattssol. The project reworks those songs with guests like Sabrina Carpenter and Ariana Grande, pushing her deeper into the global pop architecture she partly stepped away from by making a record in Swedish.

Jagger’s comment cuts through the usual promo cycle noise. It says less about a “comeback” and more about the way a well-built pop song can stick around for someone who has spent decades sorting through music. That he named a track from seven years ago, and seemed genuinely unconcerned with the idea that she ever disappeared, is probably the more telling endorsement.