- Dua Lipa, 24, is a British popstar who sold 4 million of her first self-titled album released in 2017 and some 60 million copies of her singles.
- The artist is releasing his second album, "Future Nostalgia" this Friday. The eleven titles mix contemporary sounds while drawing from the musical landscape of the 1970s to the early 2000s.
- This dancing album contains, among other themes, songs evoking the feminine condition, in perfect coherence with the public positions of Dua Lipa.
There are songs and records that, when we listen to them, instantly immerse us in more or less happy moments of our lives. Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa is very likely to be one of them. The second album of the British singer will be online from midnight on the night of Thursday to Friday. It should punctuate confined daily newspapers all around the planet in the coming weeks and become the soundtrack of memories of confinement due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
"I hope that in this period, it will bring people a little joy, comfort, that it will change their ideas compared to everything that happens outside," says the 24-year-old artist that 20 Minutes was able to reach the phone on Wednesday. "The most important thing is that everyone stays safe," she then insists.
Consciousness
For Dua Lipa, the release of this album was all about conscience. The marketing, scheduled for April 3, was brought forward a week after the unreleased songs leaked on the Internet. The damage had to be limited. She announced the news in a live Instagram post on Monday. She appeared there in tears. "I wonder if this is the right thing to do during this time because a lot of people are suffering," she said. I'm not sure it is the right thing (…) but we need joy and we have to try to see the light. "
Words that may seem presumptuous for those who do not know Dua Lipa. However, the singer was not born from the last rain of pop stars. Since her appearance on the media scene in 2015, this Kosovo Albanian girl has sold 4 million albums and some 60 million singles. In 2018, she became the youngest solo artist to reach a billion views on YouTube with the New Rules clip. The same year, she also entered the history of the prestigious Brit Awards by winning five nominations, never seen before for a solo singer. She left the ceremony with the trophies for the best British revelation and the best British solo artist.
INXS and White Town…
In other words, with her second album, she is expected at the turn. She worked on it by trying to ward off the “pressure and sources of anxiety” inherent in the exercise of the second installment because it was a question of transforming the essay. To do this, as she told 20 Minutes , she put a lot of "love and fun" into it. She says she got the idea for Future Nostalgia by listening, headphones screwed into the ears, tubes of Outkast and No Doubt, while strolling in Las Vegas. She wondered why these songs from the past made her vibrate so much and why they didn't seem dated to her.
The title in the shape of an oxymoron clearly announces the musical color: vintage tones, for nostalgia, and current electro vibrations, for the future. The rule was followed throughout the eleven pieces. The single released this Wednesday, Break My Heart , for example, is built around a sample of Need You Tonight from INXS, tube from 1987. Physical , the previous extract, sounds like an echo to the song of the same title started by Olivia Newton John in 1981. Love Again , she draws the emblematic chords of Your Woman of White Town, carton of the year 1997… which themselves consisted of a sample of Trumpets from My Woman , by Al Bowlly dating back to 1932 .
Commitments
The whole is extremely coherent, in addition to being dancing and, at times, engaged. Dua Lipa sums up: “Some songs are about love, others about being vulnerable, others about inequality or empowerment of women. "
This is the case of Boys Will Be Boys which closes the album. A ballad whose sweetness contrasts with the harshness of the lyrics. “This song talks about the difficulty of being a woman. She launches a conversation on the case of a young woman but by listening to it, others can find themselves there because the same things repeat themselves for years ”, advance the singer. The text refers to street harassment as well as the defense and protection mechanisms that women use to try to protect themselves from it. "The boys will always be boys, the girls will be women," thunders the disillusioned refrain in the face of the indulgence granted to the behaviors of the former and the maturity that the latter are forced to acquire prematurely.
Dua Lipa remains optimistic, however. "I am confident that things will change in a positive way," she said to 20 Minutes. If she recognizes that the "older" generations have "a more fixed mentality", she leaves it to the younger ones. "We can try to do pedagogy to change things and make a difference," she says. The more we talk about these subjects, the brighter the future for human rights in general, for the fight against inequality and oppression. "
"Alpha woman"
In "girl power", the leitmotif of the Spice Girls - which arose when Dua Lipa was one year old - she seems to prefer the expression of "female alpha" ("female alpha", as she uses it in her song Future Nostalgia ) . Because it is one? "It's not necessarily how I feel," she says. I have more self-confidence on some days than others. But this word ["alpha"] was mainly used for men and I believe that in terms of equality, we can share. These are the kinds of things I put in my songs to give strength to the people who listen to them. "
Dua Lipa's feminist commitment goes beyond the framework of her songs. " This is who I am. It's one of the most important things for me besides music. I'm trying to mix the two, ”she says. It has proven this repeatedly, through public statements. In an address to the highly respected Cambridge Union, the world's oldest debating society, at the university, she presented a plan for gender equality in the music industry. Let it be said, Dua Lipa is a pop star who wants to make us dance. And to think.
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