Review: DUA LIPA ‘Future Nostalgia’
Dua Lipa made some points (past, present and future)
Jack Crossing
In her Instagram live last Monday, Dua Lipa fought tears to announce the early release of her sophomore album, which had fallen victim to widespread leaks just days prior. “The thing that we need the most at the moment is music, and we need joy,” she mentioned. Whilst there’s certainly something ‘off’ about releasing music during times like these, something ‘scary’ in Dua’s words, Future Nostalgia couldn’t feel more right.
Dua’s return to music in Don’t Start Now late last year set the tone for an era that was to be fully realised. From a newfound sonic disco flavour, to a cutting-edge art direction in Hugo Comte for the album’s visual campaign, everything was unexpected but entirely correct. Whether she was gunning to be pop’s ‘it-girl’ specifically or not, she certainly landed in that neighbourhood with her early era moves.
Don’t Start Now is unfathomably catchy and danceable, containing equal parts retrospection and refreshment in a neatly-tied pop package. It’s no reinvention of the wheel, but damn...the wheel is certainly much sturdier now because of it. With an epic final chorus build in Don’t Start Now, Future Nostalgia faces an early climax, but don’t worry… this record has stamina.
Physical follows suit, with a roaring “let’s get physical” hook to begin the rollcall of retro-sampling that the record will become recognisable for. Her lyrical throwback to synth-sister Olivia Newton John is a good one—verging on the cliché, but quickly redeemed by a gritty instrumental response. The album’s other notable samples arrive in Love Again (Your Woman-White Town) and Break My Heart (Need You Tonight-INXS), which can only be described as flawless—probably the album’s two heaviest-hitters. The former’s orchestral outro is simply chill-inducing; a moment of bliss—pop music has a new saviour.
We need not forget that Lipa is an artist of her own throughout. In Cool she’s moody but self-aware. In Levitating she’s playful and carefree, with ‘glitter in the sky, [and] glitter in [her] eyes’. In Pretty Please, she’s sensuous and keeps the ball in her court amidst a lowkey funk surrounding. All are strongpoints.
In between its (many) peaks, the rest is inevitably overshadowed. Despite a slick and promising instrumental, Future Nostalgia’s title track comes off try-hard, and quirky in all the wrong ways lyrically (“you want a timeless song, I wanna change the game”). Further down, Hallucinate is a ‘good enough’ nod to Madonna’s 2005 adjacent disco album, but with a half-baked baseline and average lyrical substance (“got stars in my eyes…I’m losing my mind”) it fails to explode like its neighbouring tracks, instead remaining on a low simmer.
The record’s closers Good In Bed and Boys Will Be Boys feel slightly jarring, and lacking of the same aesthetic refinement of earlier tracks, but we’ll allow it. More than ever Dua seems to be having fun with it, staying cheeky and sarcastic, but at the same time managing to have an entire discussion about gender in the space of 2:46. The tracks bring an anthemic energy to close a record that has otherwise dispelled the myth that pop records require a 50/50 split of banger/slow ballad to be considered ‘fully realised’.
For an artist that endured a 3-year release schedule to get her debut rolling, Dua Lipa knows better than anyone that it’s all about timing. For her sophomore release however, everything falls into place. This time, she knows who she is... so too does the industry of cutting-edge creatives begging to collaborate with her. In Future Nostalgia, Dua Lipa sits in the driver’s seat, backs into reverse for a reverential sampling of pop’s forefathers, before roaring forward into an even higher gear of her millennial spirit, leaving nothing behind but stardust.
Top tracks: Love Again; Break My Heart