(Warner Records)
The British superstar has said her new album is influenced by Britpop, rave culture and Primal Scream, but you could go mad trying to find the evidence
Earlier this year, Dua Lipa gave a lengthy magazine interview, the first salvo on the promotional trail for her third album. It wasn’t very interesting – she’s smart enough to keep her private life and her opinions on anything contentious to herself in a world of over-sharing and constantly simmering online outrage – but there was one surprising detail. She said the album was “a psychedelic pop-infused tribute to UK rave culture”, influenced by Primal Scream, Massive Attack and the “don’t give a fuck-ness” of Oasis and Blur.
That all sounds intriguing. It would clearly be a dramatic departure from the disco-house sound of 2020’s Future Nostalgia, while feeling curiously of the moment: all those artists reached their peak three decades ago, and 90s revivalism appears to be having a moment. A hankering after the era’s pre-9/11 optimism and pre-smartphone straightforwardness has meant Britpop references suddenly seem to be everywhere, as a recent feature in this newspaper noted. Perhaps, by delving into some corners of the 90s where mainstream 2024 pop seldom goes, Dua Lipa has made an album as inadvertently zeitgeisty as its predecessor which rocketed her into pop’s superleague by providing a soundtrack to lockdown-era kitchen discos.
