The singer Dua Lipa marks her return to the music industry with the release of her third studio album, Radical Optimism! However, the reception of the new project by the public was not the best, with 15.8 million streams on Spotify and only 7 tracks in the top 200. But what were the reasons for this?
End Of An Era
After establishing herself in the music industry with a series of hits in a retro 80s style, Dua ended her great era in the genre with the release of the video for her song “Dance The Night”, made for the film Barbie. The singer claimed that she would continue producing pop songs, but with a different segment.
The new album, officially announced in March, was described throughout the pre-campaign as an “infusion of psychedelic pop into UK rave culture”, in addition to the singer had made clear her ambition for a musical style that followed the growing trend of Brit-pop, a successful genre in the 90s. The name of the album was explained by the singer as the idea of “going through the chaos with elegance and feeling like you can face any storm”.
Singles
The first three singles highlighted the production of Tame Impala founder Kevin Parker, who is well known in the psychedelic style. In “Houdini”, the first hit of this era, Dua Lipa creates a narrative referencing the illusionist Harry Houdini, known for his disappearing tricks. She poses the voice of the song as a person who needs to be convinced to stay, or else she will disappear: “I come and I go / Tell me all the ways you need me / I’m not here for long / Catch me or I go Houdini ”. The synthesizers in the bridge of this single have an almost mind-blowing effect.
“Training Season” and “Illusion” bring lyrics full of female empowerment, which is a hallmark of Dua’s older work. The first, creating the idea that the singer doesn’t want to have to teach new boyfriends how to love her: “I tried / To see my lovers in a good light / Don’t wanna do it just to be nice / Don’ I don’t wanna have to teach you how to love me right”. This song opened great performances, such as those given at the BRIT Awards and Grammys, with a lot of pyrotechnics and complex choreography, in addition to greatly enhancing the singer’s slightly hoarse contralto.
The last single released, “Illusion”, brought the most similar rhythm to Future Nostalgia among all the songs on the album, definitely made for the dance floor, with a more elaborate clip and an aesthetic that was already closer to the true essence of the album. The lyrics talk about how time has changed the artist and created her resistance against guys who are just an illusion, who demonstrate good attitudes to please her only at first sight: “Was a time when that shit might’ve worked / Was a time when I just played a match and let it burn / Now I’m grown, I know what I deserve / I still like dancing with the lessons I already learned”.
Track by track
One of the main criticisms made by several magazines upon the album’s release is the lack of the psychedelic style that Dua cited so much. The album is much closer to fresh pop, very well known today and has a European summer feeling. Listening to it just feels like being transferred to a soft sea beach, and this is seen from the first track.
The song “End Of An Era” presents solar pop, seems to simulate new romantic encounters and talks about the feeling of wanting to find the right person and get out of all the chaos of singleness: “What’s your name? / Come with me / ‘Cause when I see your face (ah) / The sweetest pleasure / I feel like we’re gonna be together / This could be the end of an era / Who knows, baby? This could be forever, forever“. Now, the singles seem to be a bubble when the audience is introduced to the rest of the album.
Lipa has always been very private about her personal life, without major controversies or troubled relationships with super famous people, and creates reflective lyrics that are always accompanied by a danceable rhythm. But the album came with the promise of being more personal.
The song “These Walls” is the definition of “dance crying”. In the song, the singer joins forces to save a failed relationship, but the two involved are experts at pretending that everything is fine, and only the walls that observe the painful reality could say that this love has come to an end: “It’s not supposed to hurt this much / Oh, if these walls could talk / They’d tell us to break up“.
With an almost unique opportunity to theorize about Dua’s love life, we can think that the song “Happy For You” talks about the British woman’s courtship with Anwar Hadid, the goodbye and the emotional acceptance that the person you loved so much has moved on. front, but you are happy for her: “I’m not mad, I’m not hurt / You got everything you deserve / I must’ve loved you more than I ever knew / I’m happy for you”. This is the most promising non-single on the album, an emotional ballad that explores Dua’s voice, a choir that joins these vocals and the impeccable use of the instrumental. Although the lyrics don’t fit with what’s currently trending – girls who even hate their partner’s old loves – the song brings the feeling of cycles that really come to an end, of maturity looking at itself and facing this end.
The pop in “Watcha Doing” is light, follows just one rhythm and has potential in a commercial sense, but the lyrics manage to be generic in the use of some repetitive terms. In “French Exit”, the narrator does not correspond 100% to her partner’s desires, and is not immersed in this relationship. It’s a song that remains stable and doesn’t present any major new features, either lyrically or melodically. The lyrics of the song “Maria” are basically Lipa saying “I’m up to date with therapy”. In the song, the singer thanks her current partner’s ex-girlfriend for making him a better person for this relationship: “He was cold / And now he’s the sweetest, yeah / ‘Cause he knows how much there is to lose, yeah / Ooh, I owe it to you.”
On “Falling Forever”, Dua Lipa proves that when it comes to vocals, she’s no joke! From the first second onwards, the song has his deep voice saying “How loooooooooong?”, asking the person he loves how long they can stay together, and continues expressing the desire to have a lasting and progressing love. It has an interesting construction narratively and vocally.
“Anything For Love” begins casually, recording a conversation with the artist. The piano in the song begins beautifully together with the lyrics: a woman who lacks the will to resist adversity in a relationship, who doesn’t want to give up on that love easily. But unfortunately, the song has a change that goes from the slow and concise piano to a pop beat – this time not dancing – very uninspiring.
Did Dua Lipa outdo herself with this project?
The album is very cohesive, the work as a whole is not boring and explores Dua’s powerful voice very well. But was it necessary to release this album now? The artist’s image is saturated after four years of promotion and work aimed at Future Nostalgia, she worked in an era until it became one of the biggest of the decade and carries several explosive album records.
Despite the public’s uncontrollable desire to attack the singer, Radical Optimism is not similar to her previous album, which expresses a unique personality and very clear influences in all the songs. Of course, the singer should have invested more deeply in the psychedelic genre she promised, focusing on a single segment, leaving the album as a whole less confusing.
Perhaps, Dua needs time to reinvent and focus on a style of pop she wants to work on. She has an important characteristic that every successful person has, which is persistence and certainly has the strength to make a more powerful and memorable album for her career.
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The article above was edited by Maria Esther Cortez.
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