Her second studio album, Future Nostalgia, arrived on March 27, 2020 — roughly two weeks after the country was plunged into the earliest, most harrowing days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tour supporting the record was postponed three times due to pandemic-related difficulties before finally happening in 2022.
Despite all this, Nostalgia went multi-platinum, spawned a string of chart-dominating singles (“Don’t Start Now,” “Break My Heart,” “Levitating” and “Love Again,” to name a handful) and earned the English-Albanian pop star a Grammy for best pop vocal album.
Not bad for poor timing.
Then came her much anticipated third album, Radical Optimism, arriving two months after Ariana Grande's and Beyonce's latest records, and less than a month after Taylor Swift’s mammoth The Tortured Poets Department were all still being absorbed by the culture and rising talents like Chappell Roan, Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter became ubiquitous.
It was, to some extent, a metaphorical tree falling in a pop music-saturated forest — would anyone hear it?
The warning signs for Optimism were there early: Supple lead single “Houdini” stalled out at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and its follow-up, the equally arresting “Training Season,” fared worse, tapping out at No. 27. “Illusion,” the album’s third and most recent single, peaked at No. 43. (Yet, for all that, Optimism did make it all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart.)
Regardless, whatever the confluence of factors obscuring the end-to-end brilliance that is Radical Optimism, this much is certain: Dua Lipa has made the best pop record of 2024.
What’s most amusing is that so much of what’s propelling Carpenter and Roan and even Swift, to some extent — an embrace of vaguely Euro-tinged disco and synthpop textures — was reintroduced, in no small part, by the popularity of Future Nostalgia.
On Radical Optimism, the 29-year-old singer-songwriter neatly expands upon and refines that luxe, expensive approach, retaining producer Ian Kirkpatrick from her prior LP and turning to new producers Andrew Wyatt, Danny Harle and Kevin Parker (better known to most as Tame Impala). The 11-track Optimism is a lean 36 minutes and change, exquisite in its melodic sophistication; nary a moment is wasted.
Sonically, Dua Lipa and her producers display an extraordinary sensitivity to the effect of words, but also how they’re presented. Listen to how the phrase “Got me feeling vertigo” in “Training Season” seems to spiral up and away from the ear, a clever, dizzying effect compounding the sensation of the words being sung.
The unadorned opening to the brief “Anything for Love”— Dua Lipa sharing a casual moment with her collaborators in the studio, transitioning to her raw vocals against a delicate piano and bass that dissolves into a pulsing backbeat — deftly underscores the poignant lyric.
Throughout the record, Lipa, who has a co-writing credit on every track here, continues to be one of the more underrated pop lyricists, capable of taking the stuff of a million ballads — a relationship running aground — and find a fresh way to grab listeners anew: “We call it love, but hate it here / Did we really mean it when we said forever?” she sings on “These Walls,” one of the best pop songs of the last decade, and a fitting sequel to her equally spectacular 2021 kiss-off, “We’re Good.”
Much of Radical Optimism toggles between seizing control, declaiming self-worth and toying with ceding power to a potential lover, if only for a moment.
Still Levitating
The carefree girl in the club on the opener “End of an Era” (“What’s it about a kiss that makes me feel like this? / Makes me an optimist, I guess”) has dusted herself off, accepted that which she cannot change and wished her ex well by the closing “Happy for You” (“I see where you’re at now, you picked up the pieces / And then you gave them to somebody else”).There’s a sturdy sense of self underneath even the most uncertain moments, and a surety reflected in Dua Lipa’s seemingly effortless navigation of her pop star life.
The past 12 months have seen more than one A-lister loudly bemoan the crushing weight of expectation, public life and the endlessly ravenous internet, but Dua Lipa has breezed from one obligation to another, serving as host and musical guest on a spring episode of Saturday Night Live, headlining the Austin City Limits Music Festival — and making time to two-step at the Broken Spoke — or popping up at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction to honor Cher, or dueting with Elton John in London.
A top-tier pop star actually embracing the pressure and attention is more of a rarity these days, thanks in no small part to social media’s insatiable, microdose mentality and the need for artists to constantly feed the maw of the marketplace.
Indeed, what’s most remarkable about Dua Lipa is, had she so chosen, she could’ve spent 2024 griping about how her flawless record was being effectively ignored. Instead, she’s seemed to trust in the work.
Masterpieces have their own timetable. Some are instantly self-evident — which is certainly true here — but others need a little longer to be recognized.
Perhaps that acknowledgement will materialize next year, when Dua Lipa’s global tour supporting Radical Optimism kicks into high gear. (There are a handful of stadium and arena dates in Asia in November and December.)
She’ll be on the road around the world from March to October — stopping for two nights at Dallas’ American Airlines Center on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 — and odds are good, she’ll only burnish her reputation as a hard-working, hit-producing machine.
In a here today, gone later today culture, it can often seem remarkable that any album is made with any intention beyond instant gratification. Radical Optimism is that rare experience: an intense dopamine rush crafted by an unparalleled pop star that will sound as spectacular a decade from now as it does right this second.
Wrong moment? Dua Lipa wouldn’t know anything about that.
