Album Review: Dua Lipa Rules With "Future Nostalgia"

Get used to a female alpha.

The album may be called Future Nostalgia, but Dua Lipa’s second record is for right now. It was even dropped ahead of its scheduled release date to entertain the coronavirus-quarantined masses, that’s how 'now' it is.

Dua Lipa, an outspoken and endearingly braggadocious pop star, is as agile as her music. How else to explain her dropping a second and improved music video for single "Physical" with a workout plan perfectly suited for our new stuck-at-home reality? (We’ll assume the lyrics to first single "Don’t Start Now", including "don’t show up, don’t come out", are just coincidentally about quarantine—unless she really is a self-isolation soothsayer.)

Even though the album opens with the part-spoken and Prince-infused title track, and is elsewhere indebted to slinky '70s disco ("Hallucinate", "Break My Heart"), Future Nostalgia is a modern and progressive collection of tunes. We shouldn’t be surprised. On her underrated debut, and especially her breakout hit "New Rules", Lipa established herself as a confident taskmaster, and that song’s spiritual sequel "Don’t Stop Now" repeats the formula by having her firmly recite instructions to the listener.

The new album is otherwise littered with feminist slogans, such as, "I can't teach a man how to wear his pants" and "boys will be boys but girls will be women", which wouldn’t ring true if she didn’t also walk the walk. Remember when she won a Grammy and then called out the Recording Academy’s president for claiming female artists needed to step up? That BDE (big Dua energy) is all over this thing.

The angular "Don’t Start Now" is an early highlight (maybe inspired by her Grammys collab with St. Vincent?), as is the airy "Cool" (co-written by the genius Tove Lo) and the pulsating montage-music of "Physical". Club-ready tunes "Hallucinate" and "Break My Heart" fulfil their duty (which is, of course, to please your booty). But the finest cuts are saved for last. They'd be the unexpected "Your Woman"-referencing "Love Again", and the outlandish "Good in Bed", which outdoes Lily Allen and Kate Nash with its piano-sampling sex monologue and is elevated by the record’s simplest and catchiest chorus.

"Boys Will Be Boys" is the album’s weakest musical moment, even if it’s Dua at her most bracingly direct, calling out rape culture with one of the best lyrics of the year: "If you're offended by this song, you're clearly doing something wrong." The orchestral strings make "Boys Will Be Boys" feel more like ironic parody—which it sorta is—but you can’t help feel that the point she's making would be more profound if it had been layered with a backing track similar to her other made-to-be-played-loud bangers; as if it was designed to infiltrate playlists and speakers its subjects couldn't escape. It’s the only misstep on an otherwise brilliantly produced LP.

Future Nostalgia, up until its slightly misjudged final moment, gives us radio-ready yet meaningful pop from an unapologetically feminist persona. Dua Lipa may be built for speed, but she’s also built to last. Get used to a female alpha.

4/5