Future Nostalgia (Dua Lipa, 2020)

I thought I might have a few more albums to write about this year, but this year was 2020 so it is just Dua Lipa's latest album.

I wish I had more to write about, but my brain has been all over the place and this was the only record that I was able to stick with.

I was not that familiar with Dua Lipa's music - I tried listening to her first album, but none of the songs stuck in my head. 

And then at the end of last year 'Don't Stop Now' came out and that song completely turned me around. This was also around the time when she was being touted as up for the next James Bond theme, and I was keen to hear what her new album sounded like.

Released just as New Zealand went into lockdown, Future Nostalgia was probably intended as a party album but at the end of March it became a different form of escape.

I always liked disco music, and this album seems to be a refraction of the neo-disco revival of the millennium.

 'Don't Stop Now' is a minimalist dance number that manages to feel familiar. Boasting a simple catchy chorus, funky bass and some stabs of strings, the song feels like a dare. Big crunchy pop-dance songs are not as in vogue as they were a decade ago, and this song feels like it is answering a challenge to create a dance track without the heavy percussion of a David Guetta. 

My favourite chunk of the album is from 'Levitating' to 'Good in Bed'. I do not mind 'Physical' or the other early tracks, but this batch of songs build upon each other in a really fun way.  

From what I have read, 'Levitating' was the song that cracked the overall sound of the album. Opening with repeated processed vowels (I could not tell if they an instrument or a vocal sample), it feels like a mini-introduction to this section of the album. It is a fun song, but it is followed by 'Pretty Please', which might be my favourite track on the album. It features a particularly bouncy bottom end that is hard to resist.

'Hallucinate' is another highlight - closer to the dance songs of a decade ago, it quickly became a song I gravitated toward. Listening to this song, I was reminded of Lipa's interest in singing a James Bond song. While the production is probably too poppy, there is something in it that put my onside with this idea, particularly the lyric "Kill me slowly with your kiss". 

What I liked about the album was how stripped down it is as a pop album - it is only 11 tracks, and only one song goes over four minutes. Bless.

The songs also stick to the dance floor - I was expecting some kind of ballad or torch song, but the album stays the course. The lyrics are witty and filled with innuendo. Lipa's phrasing is pretty spare but her restraint actually works for the songs' humour. There is a lack of pretension to the whole project which is admirable. 

If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour. 

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