Future Nostalgia - Dua Lipa (2020)

To mark my absence, I thought I would restart the new year with one of my favourite albums of 2020. Future Nostalgia was released 27th March 2020 and is the sophomore album by pop superstar Dua Lipa. Released nearly three years after her eponymous debut album, Future Nostalgia is well on the way to hitting the same heights as Dua Lipa with the potential to achieve more. Dua Lipa began her rise to stardom in 2013 after landing a publishing deal and singing on an advert for The X-Factor. She soon was signed by the Warner Music Group and began writing and releasing her own music, starting with ‘Hotter Than Hell’ (2016) and ‘New Love’ (2015) which would both end up featuring on her debut album. On 2nd June 2017, Dua Lipa released her debut album, Dua Lipa, featuring the hit-singles ‘New Rules’ and ‘IDGAF’. Lipa won a Grammy and a BRIT Award for Best New Artist off the back of its success with the album being well-received critically – it has since gone 2x Platinum in the UK and 1x Platinum in the US. Over the next three years, Lipa continued to plug Dua Lipa and reap the benefits of its success, featuring on smash hits like ‘One Kiss’ with Calvin Harris and ‘Electricity’ with Silk City. It seemed as if Dua Lipa could do no wrong, but could she replicate the same success on the infamous second album?

In a word, yes. Future Nostalgia came as a breath of fresh air in a pop scene becoming gradually oversaturated with generic trap beats. Future Nostalgia incorporates notions of retrofuturism and 1980s synth-pop into a dance-pop album filled to the brim with disco influences stretching from the 1970s and 80s to the club jams of the 90s. The album opens with the title track which certainly sets the tone for the album, even if it is one of the few tracks on the album that lacks overall quality. Through the retrofuturistic, 80s pop disco sound and fuzzy bassline, ‘Future Nostalgia’ ticks all the boxes of what to expect but add Lipa’s spoken verses and lack of overall energy, there are certainly better songs. ‘Don’t Start Now’, for example, was the first single off Future Nostalgia and blends the 80s and modern influences perfectly. The funk bassline provides the melody for ‘Don’t Start Now’. Dua Lipa’s low register singing intertwines with the bass through excellent vocal production. The bulk of the song is relatively stripped back until the bridge where there are various vocal samples to add texture which have been mixed in impeccably. The wobbly bass on ‘Don’t Start Now’ is reminiscent of Daft Punk basslines and can also be heard in ‘Levitating’ and ‘Break My Heart’. ‘Break My Heart’ was the third promotional single off Future Nostalgia and screams disco right down to the minor details. It incorporates the wobbly bassline with a four-to-the-floor drum rhythm, a Nile Rodgers-Esque ultra-clean high-pitched guitar melody, and an electronic string section during the bridge, similar to that of Boney M.’s ‘Daddy Cool’ or The Trammps ‘Disco Inferno’ – disco classics.

As for the other tracks on Future Nostalgia, ‘Cool’ and ‘Love Again’ are both standard album tracks that uphold a good standard through the consistent disco theme, primarily through the use of strings and the four-to-the-floor drums in ‘Love Again’. The last two tracks, ‘Good in Bed’ and ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, indicate the album is definitely coming to a close, however, are both empowering. ‘Good in Bed’ is relatively self-explanatory but uses a nice walking bassline, which gives the song an upbeat timbre, that matches its explicit lyrical nature. Whereas ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is a softer song that returns to a more classic Dua Lipa, dark-pop sound but sings of empowering girls to be women, to be strong, and the societal problems that lie within the song’s lyrical content. Saying this, there is only really one proper verse with the lyrics “Boys will be boys // but girls will be women” being repeated in place of the other verses. I am all for the message, but there is a lack of execution as far as a successful song is concerned.

My stand-out tracks on Future Nostalgia are ‘Levitating’, ‘Pretty Please’, and ‘Hallucinate’. Special mention must go to ‘Physical’, ‘Don’t Start Now’, and ‘Break My Heart’ though for their commercial success and fan-favouritism by incorporating the aforementioned disco elements. ‘Hallucinate’ was the fourth promotional single and is a straight-up pop anthem. Along with ‘Physical’, ‘Hallucinate’ is the most 90s-club-anthem as it gets in the modern day – the vocal production and use of echo is used to create an airy texture. The drumbeat sits high in the mix like in the house music they play in the gym and synths sit much lower to fill in the space between the drums and vocals, which acts as a melody. The chorus is big, loud, poppy, dancey – everything you would expect from the electronica influenced crescendo in the verses.

‘Pretty Please’ is a more stripped back piece that is almost identical to ‘Don’t Start Now’ in song structure. The bass carries the melody with textures being created through various samples like clapping, clicking, and random “yeah” shouts being scattered about. This song's enjoyment comes in the way the simple beat mixes with Dua Lipa’s slightly pulled back vocals – not as exciting as the rest of the album but funky and catchy. ‘Levitating’ was the fourth single released off Future Nostalgia – the single features a verse by American hip-hop star DaBaby which, if anything, takes away from the quality of the original. Once again, the bassline sits high in the mix which gives the track an 80s disco feel – very Earth, Wind and Fire – very nostalgic, if you will. The vocals' multi-layering accentuates their clean and powerful sound, creating a powerful presence above all musical accompaniments. ‘Levitating’ is by far one of the best songs off Future Nostalgia so if nothing else, make sure you have heard it. As a whole project, I think Future Nostalgia is strong but knowing Dua Lipa, the album will continue to be rereleased with extra tracks from here until her next release, so be sure to expect more. Dua Lipa has, in my humble opinion, stamped her mark on pop music through this album and by embracing a different sound – much like Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, it uses disco influences in a pop setting, marking, if only for a moment, a small recall back to the feel-good era of disco.