Songs from an album released two years ago are still making headway on radio and in commercials.
All this is perhaps mythologizing somewhat but the sheer presence of Dua Lipa is hard to ignore in public life. It’s an interesting place to be for Dua Lipa but she rides on the coattails of previous pop divas and takes her place as the rightful Pop leader of this generation with her second album. The album is loaded with singles which all broke the top fifty on the charts in both the UK and America and are all surrounded by complimentary support from music journalists.
Dua Lipa seems to have taken up this mantel with Future Nostalgia. A fitting example of the previous decades achieving this was with Madonna, someone who regularly broke the charts for three decades and enjoyed the same amount of lauding from critics. While both artists operate in the same vagueness of the pop-genre, the two aspects of commendation never seemed to coexist in any meaningful way. This time period seemed to offer either one or the other: commercial acclaim seen with the likes of Katy Perry, or critical acclaim as seen with the likes of Björk. During the late 2000s and throughout the 2010’s, one thing has been missing: a female Pop icon with critical and commercial support in equal bucket loads. The truer mission statement comes later in the opening song and title track: “I know you ain’t used to a female alpha.” While delineating a lot of the empowering subtext that’s present throughout the album, the line also defines Dua’s place in the Pop landscape at this moment. The album is front-to-back pop perfection, not so much a landscape of experimentation but instead one of perfect honing of the 80s revivalisms she emulates in the process, curating a set of timeless songs she originally chides the listener for wanting. On Future Nostalgia, instead of forging a new path, Dua Lipa presents a set of 11 songs which perfect the game instead of changing it. What’s ironic is how far from the truth this opening salvo actually is. Dua Lipa kick-starts her second album with the line, “you want a timeless song, I wanna change the game.” Seemingly a manifesto for the album ahead, it suggests a mould-breaking album, a complete departure from the pop-sphere and a playground of experimentation.
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