“I want to change the game”, announces Dua Lipa in a half-sung London drawl, to open her new album. The very title, Future Nostalgia, would suggest it’s more of an update than an upset, but it certainly delivers good vibes by the bucketful.
Dua Lipa shot to fame with her self-titled debut album in 2017, and has since picked up armfuls of awards and guest appeared on some of the biggest pop hits of the last few years. The British singer’s second album, originally due to be released today but leaked a fortnight ago, has been in the works since 2018. She recorded over 60 tracks in the studio, but only 11 made the final track list, totalling a lean 37 minutes.
Keeping good to her word, the pangs of nostalgia come thick and fast. Despite born in 1995, Dua Lipa’s self-confessed influences come from the eighties and nineties, with liberal sprinklings of Madonna, Kyle Minogue, Spice Girls, and Matthew Wilder. There’s more than a hint of INXS’s “Need You Tonight” in Lipa’s “Break My Heart”, and an almost umbilical link to Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” (Dua Lipa too has made a dancercise video to go along with it). There’s even some bass lines (“Don’t Start Now”) that wouldn’t be out of place in a Herbie Hancock number from the sixties or seventies.
But there’s plenty of “future” too, and Dua Lipa’s indefatigable character shines through her vocals and lyrics. The title track is bursting with semi-rapped sass, as is “Levitating”, and she’s got a solid dance floor belter in “Love Again”. There’s slinky chromaticism in “Good in Bed”, and let’s not let a great bit of cowbell in the delightfully funky “Pretty Please” go without note.
The whole album is unfailingly upbeat until the final song, a rather bittersweet reminder of reality that catches you off-guard: “It’s second nature to walk home before the sun goes down / And put your keys between your knuckles when there’s boys around.” Singing over a stripped-back string accompaniment, it’s really quite a poignant, stop-dancing-and-listen tonic after 10 good-time songs. Unfortunately the lyrics descend into the banal (“If you’re offended by this song…”), but it’s nonetheless a rousing and thoughtful anthem to conclude with.
So is it a game changer? No. But that doesn’t stop it being a lot of fun, which was Dua Lipa’s aim from day one. And she’s clearly brimming with confidence, standing happily on her own two feet; collaborations with Nile Rodgers, Mark Ronson and Pharrell Williams, all failed to make the final track list.
So grab a “Snowball” (I’m told that’s an eighties drink), get together with your girls on Zoom, and have a dance with Dua. You deserve it.
