Zara Larsson's new 'Blue Moon' video has fans comparing its water-splashed fairy visuals to one of Beyoncé's best-known adverts, sparking debate about how pop stars borrow from each other. The comparison has also sent many fans back to a piece of 2000s pop glamour they clearly still remember.
Directed by Charlotte Rutherford, the music video is the fourth single from her fifth album, Midnight Sun, and was released this week as her tour wraps up. It casts her as a glowing fairy and a mermaid, with glitter, rain, and dramatic water splashes.
Zara Larsson's Blue Moon Video vs. Beyoncé's Water Ad
The comparison took off when an X reply paired Zara's clip with Beyoncé's late-2000s Crystal Geyser commercial, in which Beyoncé dances through bursting water in a sequined dress.
Zara Larsson embodies a fairy and a mermaid in the music video for “Blue Moon.” pic.twitter.com/Iw0svds6Uf
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) October 15, 2026
Both visuals feature a solo pop star in light-catching wardrobe, using water as a dance partner. The settings, however, diverge sharply: Beyoncé's ad is bright, clean, and sky-blue, whereas Zara's video moves through a motel car park, bus station, and billboard before ending in a rain-soaked bus-stop routine. The sparkle remains, but the atmosphere turns darker and more modern.
Birth daughter of Beyoncé Giselle Knowles pic.twitter.com/AJ0xQgZeNl
— mizge (@mihailo____) October 15, 2026
This fairy aesthetic also builds on Zara's recent Winx Club collaboration—a Midnight Sun visual placing her alongside animated fairies. That context positions the Beyoncé commercial as just one reference point among several in an evolving personal aesthetic.
Zara Larsson has earned her enchantix and learned how to miniaturize ✨ pic.twitter.com/E6ySQQLiv3
— ram (@winxinator_v1) October 15, 2026
Why Fans See a Tribute, Not a Copy
The comparison started as a joke. One X reply called Zara the 'Birth daughter of Beyoncé Giselle Knowles', and the replies that followed kept the humour going. One user called her a 'waterbender', and others pointed to the rain-drenched drama of Rihanna's 'Umbrella'. Together they turned one side-by-side into a game of naming pop's most famous water scenes. Spanish outlet Jenesaispop went further, calling the video an homage to Beyoncé's advert.
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On Reddit's r/popheads, the conversation moved from the joke to the details. Fans spotted the Beyoncé link almost immediately and kept going. Some suggested Aquamarine and Disney fairies as further reference points, which made the video look less like one borrowed image and more like a collage of childhood favourites. One commenter read the grimy city settings against the fantasy world as a story about turning an ordinary summer into something magical.
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Zara's own words fit that reading. She has called the video a long-held passion project made with friends and creatives, and her Instagram Story describes how a 'silly ad' can remind people that beauty is all around them, including in everyday, ordinary places.
Y2K Commercial Glamour Keeps Coming Back
Pop culture has officially entered its archival era, where every music video becomes a conversation with the past's visual language. What makes the 'Blue Moon' discourse so fascinating isn't a search for a smoking gun, but the joy fans take in tracing pop's visual family tree.
When an artist takes the pristine shimmer of a late-2000s commercial break and grounds it in a modern, moody streetscape, it stops being a copycat move and becomes a living museum of Y2K glamour. Zara Larsson didn't just drop a music video—she gave pop fans a reason to remember why they fell in love with glossy visual spectacle in the first place.
