Album Review: Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia”
May 18, 2020
“New York’s hottest club is…” your kitchen, or bedroom, or dining room, or any other room in your apartment where you can blast Dua Lipa’s funky, disco-driven sophomore album “Future Nostalgia.” The eleven-track record oozes ‘70s and ‘80s disco dance beats reminiscent of the golden age of New York City night club culture and Studio 54. With this album, Dua Lipa now leads the lineup of other pop stars who have recently released similarly-tuned singles, like Lady Gaga with “Stupid Love," Doja Cat with “Say So,” and The Weeknd with “Blinding Lights.” Since her debut, self-titled album that featured the anthemic “New Rules” in 2017, she’s proved that dance-pop can, in fact, be done right in 2020.
On the opening track, “Future Nostalgia,” Lipa rasps, “You want a timeless song, I wanna change the game/Like modern architecture, John Lautner coming your way,” establishing the theme for the entirety of the record over an electronic funk beat, evocative of Daft Punk with a taste of the disco queen herself, Donna Summer. This idyllic energy shines throughout the entirety of the album and is prominent on “Levitating,” as she sings “I believe that you’re for me, I feel it in our energy/I see us written in the stars/We can go wherever, so let’s do it now or never/Baby, nothing’s ever, ever too far.”
Even on the darker, Olivia Newton-John-inspired track, “Physical,” the spirit is high. The slow build-up has a similar deep-synth vibe to the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” and Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses At Night,” and the sudden burst of exuberance mid-song is akin to Irene Cara’s “Flashdance...What a Feeling.” Like Newton-John in 1981 (when “Physical” spent ten weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100), Lipa encourages energy as she sings, “Baby, keep on dancing like you ain’t got a choice/So come on, come on, come on/Let’s get physical.”
The deep basslines on “Don’t Start Now,” “Pretty Please,” and “Hallucinate” pulsate through the speakers, adding a hypnotic groove to each track that Lipa further deepens with the huskiness of her voice. It’s clear that she is no casual Spotify surfer, given that the artist worked with Nile Rodgers of the ‘70s supergroup Chic in 2019, who also laid down basslines for Daft Punk’s Grammy-winning album “Random Access Memories” in 2013. You can hear that kinship in her basslines, showcasing her archaeological knack for a musical past that is still present, but just needs to be unearthed. On “Future Nostalgia,” Lipa is a master at excavation— digging up sounds, moods, and musical tastes.
Overall, the record gives room for retrospection, with its amalgamation of eclectic samples and obvious nods to pop music’s finest scattered throughout. With the eye of an expert antiquarian, Lipa is not just dusting off classics from half a century ago, she hunts for recent finds, too. In “Good in Bed,” the breezy cheekiness that’s often found in early Lily Allen tunes is unmistakable. At first listen, the song seems out of place, but the easy rhyming and simple piano chords make it hard not to bob your head and repeatedly mouth along “bad, mad, sad” with her.
On the final track, “Boys Will Be Boys,” Lipa gives the listener a chance to sober up from the preceding, playful tracks. It’s club closing time as she lists the harsh realities women face, raising awareness about sexual harassment and gender equality while singing over a set of orchestral strings with a children’s choir, “Boys will be, boys will be boys/But girls will be women.” The forthright freshness that launched her into fame in 2017 is what returns the listener to the present in the closing number.
Aptly named, “Future Nostalgia” masterfully shows that modern pop music can’t completely advance without acknowledging the past. On each retro-funk track, Dua Lipa recalls the pop of the past, while moving forward to something entirely new. In the spirit of a true modern classic, it bursts with bright boldness, rousing a dejected generation to get on their feet and dance in spite of it all.