In the lead-up to Dua Lipa’s third album, there have been hints the British-Albanian pop powerhouse could be heading in a number of different directions. First, there was debut single “Houdini,” a minimalist dance track with an earworm of a chorus and a video that showcased Lipa’s finely-honed dance skills, followed by “Training Season,” which operated in a similar vein. Then, there was “Illusion,” a euphoric, Daft Punk-inflected Europop number with an epic visual of Lipa cavorting around the same Barcelona swimming pool where her forebear Kylie Minogue shot the “Slow” video.
Despite what the title might suggest, the song is a glittering, wide-eyed ode to the butterflies-in-stomach feeling of meeting a new lover, delivered with the kind of breezy nonchalance (“Another girl falls in love / Another girl leaves the club,” she sings on the impossibly catchy bridge) that only Lipa can pull off. While the early singles seemed to suggest a change of tack—the “end of an era,” you could say—it quickly becomes apparent that the whispers of a radical pivot on the new album were unfounded.
Instead of overhauling her sound, though, Lipa has refined it—and the results are irresistible. Once you’ve got through the darker, more industrial sound of “Houdini” and “Training Season,” the record opens up into a kaleidoscopic, summer-ready selection of pop delights. There’s the bittersweet “These Walls,” with its call-and-response chorus charting the dissolution of a toxic relationship, or the lolloping funk bassline and ABBA-esque melodies of “Whatcha Doing,” which sees her question the head-spinning effects of a new lover’s seductions.
Most of the songs seem to chart an old love ending and a new one beginning, but it says a lot about Lipa’s ability to balance the intense public interest in her personal life—it only takes a quick Google to discover who she’s dated over the past few years—with a kind of carefully engineered unknowability. The prevailing (and evidently highly successful) approach to scoring a chart-topping single for the past few years has been to balance the confessional and the cryptic: to sprinkle enough clues and Easter eggs to keep the gossip blogs whirring and their rabid fanbases combing through every lyric, and thus to ensure their place in the public conversation. Instead, on Lipa seems to take her cues from a different generation of divas—Minogue being one of them—who have, for the most part, drawn a line in the sand between their songwriting and their personal lives. (Great pop, you could argue, is universal, not “relatable.”)
That’s not to say the album doesn’t have personality, however. More than ever before, Lipa leans into her sense of humor, notably on the deliciously tongue-in-cheek Europudding bangers “French Exit” and “Maria.” The former’s shuffle beat and bouncy guitar line serve as a delightful backdrop to one of the record’s more bonkers moments, as she intones the title in a knowingly silly French accent, while the latter features Spanish guitar and the subtle clack of castanets, as she sings her gratitude to the fiery former ex of her current partner for teaching him to be the lover he is today.
As far as pop superstardom trajectories go, Dua Lipa has had one of the most unlikely rises in recent memory. Despite being hotly tipped as the next major British pop act when she first emerged almost a decade ago, it took two years of album promo (and seven singles) before she finally landed a blockbuster hit with her mischievous ode to female friendship, “New Rules,” and its equally playful music video. Then, she was poised to dominate 2020 with her sophomore effort and its slew of irresistible, disco-inflected singles, when the pandemic arrived weeks before its release. Where other artists delayed their albums, Lipa went full speed ahead—and it was the best decision she could have made. Not only did become one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year, it also marked her out as a spectacular performer. Whenever an obstacle has been placed in Lipa’s way, she’s gracefully side-stepped with a wink—and a knowing twist of the hip.
Some might be surprised by Lipa’s decision to double down on the sound of Where she could have simply gone bigger, bolder, brasher, she’s instead gone slicker and more refined, fine-tuning her formula into something impressively self-assured—and perfectly timed as the warmer days of summer begin to roll in. But most important of all? It’s catchy as hell.
