Helena Gao turns Zara Larsson’s Grammy-hit co-writing into her own freakier pop era

If you only know Helena Gao from her credits, the headline is simple: she wrote nine 10ths of Zara Larsson’s breakout album Midnight Sun, then got a Grammy nod for it. Now Gao is using that proof-of-work to launch her own revelatory pop era, starting with a new run of singles and EPs that feel like a creative turn, not a victory lap.

Over the past few years, the Chinese-Danish artist has released a handful of singles and EPs, and the standout track mentioned in the source is “God’s Favourite.” That release “split the difference between NewJeans and R&B,” and it includes an “excellent Sims-referencing video.” The important part for decision-makers, even in music, is that the branding is doing real signaling: Gao is positioning her solo work as something current and network-aware, rather than a solo-by-association afterthought.

So what changed? The source is clear that Gao’s new music feels like a true flourishing, and that it sidelines her older sweetness for something “freakier.” That is not vague taste talk. The specific sonic ingredients listed are heavy bass, stuttering trance, and a pitch-bending falsetto. In other words, she is pushing into a more kinetic, more synthetic, more genre-meshed lane, where the hook is as much about motion and texture as it is about melody.

The comparison points matter because they map how audiences might interpret the shift. The source says her English and Mandarin singing and her falsetto can “rival that of Caroline Polachek.” It also describes the style as braided to compete with a particular kind of art-pop performance: Caroline Polachek is an easy shorthand for an audience that expects clever vocal control and a taste for rhythmic glitchiness. The point is not that Gao is copying anybody, it is that her solo material is being measured against the bar set by established artists who built their careers on making experimentation feel pop-compatible.

If you zoom out beyond the artist level, the story reads like a case study in how songwriting credentials translate into audience trust. Co-writing “nine 10ths” of a moment-defining album is basically a transferable reputation asset: people who care about craft, radio viability, streaming momentum, and label confidence can trace the outcome back to real work. And the source explicitly frames it as “a fine springboard” for “the relaunch of Helena Gao’s solo career.” The Grammy nod adds another layer. In a world where attention cycles are brutal and credit roll narratives often get buried, an award-level stamp functions like a shortcut through skepticism.

There is also an industry incentive story here. Songwriters who get known for writing hits for bigger names often face a credibility trap when they go solo. Fans can assume the success came from the main artist’s persona and production team, not the writer’s taste. Gao’s answer is to release music that foregrounds her own stylistic decisions: heavy bass patterns, trance-like stutters, and a vocal approach that includes pitch-bending falsetto and bilingual delivery in English and Mandarin. The second-order implication is that she is trying to make “Helena Gao” a searchable identity, not just a byline.

From a strategic perspective, the source also teases a timeline: “Debut project coming later this year.” That matters because it forces the question executives always ask, in any vertical: is the single-and-EP cadence building toward a coherent portfolio, or is it scattered experimentation? The article’s framing suggests coherence. It calls out specific releases and specific stylistic elements, and it implies continuity in the direction of travel from “God’s Favourite” to this “real flourishing” sound. In other words, the new material is not random; it is a deliberate solo relaunch arc.

For peers trying to translate behind-the-scenes success into front-of-house momentum, this is the playbook in miniature. A major album credit and a Grammy nod are not the finish line, they are the entry ticket. The work is what comes next: shipping tracks that prove your creative voice still exists when you are no longer the songwriter behind someone else’s spotlight. Gao’s solo turn, as described here, is heavy on sonic identity and built to keep listeners from treating her as a credit economy footnote.