While every concert and an increasing number of albums are being pushed back to dates later in 2020, Dua Lipa has gone the other way and brought her second LP forward a week. This must be because its 11 tracks already leaked online, but it also provides a much-needed pickmeup in a world on a serious downer. “I've been a little bit conflicted about whether it's the right thing to do during this time because lots of people are suffering," she said this week. Most should be grateful for some good news – the whole thing is great fun.
After her debut album went platinum in both the UK and US in 2017, earning her two Brit awards in 2018 and two Grammys the year after, expectations are stratospheric for the follow-up. But while physical sales will surely be reduced during the lockdown, Future Nostalgia deserves to have the nation stream the heck out of it.
The story goes that her new sound, and the album title, was inspired by listening to Outkast and No Doubt and wondering why their songs haven’t dated. She’s also clearly been listening to the recent work of her past collaborator Mark Ronson, with whom her music shares a slick disco feel. It’s all about that bass, from the rubbery Chic lines of the hit single Don’t Start Now to the thick, steady groove of Pretty Please. Daft Punk’s polished style is in there too, in the filtered house beats of Hallucinate and the occasional robotic backing vocal.
There are a couple of missteps. She’s no rapper, a style she has a stab at on the eccentric title track, and the dirty lyrics and rolling piano of Good in Bed sound like something Lily Allen rejected as too crass. “I dedicate this verse to all that good pipe in the moonlight,” she sings – ooh-er. But classy, dancey, melodic tracks dominate. The song Cool sounds like its title – it’s the only one here even close to being a slowie and it still sounds precision-tooled to get feet moving.
She wraps up with an empowering message on Boys Will Be Boys. “Boys will be boys but girls will be women,” she chants with a mass of female backing vocals. The whole album cements her status as a “female alpha”, as she puts it. No longer a newcomer, this is is a confident application for long-term residence on the pop A-list.
The world feels beaten down right now. At least Dua Lipa’s return is a tonic.
