Two years after New Rules made her a global star, Dua Lipa is back with an album of sheer disco pop perfection – and plenty to say about sex, politics and her night in a strip club with Lizzo
Dua Lipa knew two things before starting the follow-up to her massive self-titled 2017 debut: she would call it Future Nostalgia, and it would be “an album that was really fun and made me wanna dance and removed the outside world”, she says. Few albums have fulfilled their intended purpose faster. Future Nostalgia was meant to arrive today, until an online leak brought it forward to the first Friday of Britain’s coronavirus lockdown. Lipa wasn’t sure it felt right to release it during the pandemic, but accurately concluded that her brilliant disco-wreathed anthems-in-waiting – the kind that transform kitchen tiles into a makeshift Studio 54 – might distract fans from the news.
At the very least, a day of radio interviews and unceasing congrats stopped the 24-year-old from stressing about when to take her government-sanctioned daily walk. We FaceTime in the early evening of Future Nostalgia’s premature birthday, Lipa at ease in a Christopher Kane “Techno Sexual” jumper, modish straw-on-tarmac hair tied up, saucer eyes unadorned. Like everyone, she has been self-isolating, eating chips and watching Tiger King. Unlike everyone, she is doing it in a plush Airbnb (her
London flat flooded) with her model boyfriend Anwar Hadid (brother of models Gigi and Bella). Later, she will be conference-calling friends and family to “drink and dance through the phone”.