Nostalgic for Dua Lipa
A review of Dua Lipa’s outstanding Tiny Desk Concert (and Future Nostalgia album)
On 4 December 2020, the Queen of Quarantine, Dua Lipa, released a Tiny Desk Concert “Home Edition” that featured songs off her Grammy-award-winning album Future Nostalgia. In just a few months, the video collected over 15 million views! It’s no surprise given the timing of the concert. With the onset of the pandemic and everyone being stuck at home, people had nothing better to do than sit back, relax, and vibe to hit after hit by the British-Kosovan artist.
Dua Lipa’s Tiny Desk stage creates a warm and relaxing environment as if she’s inviting you to come in and chill with her. Behind Lipa is a shelf filled with retro appliances: old books, fans, radios, and even house plants. It gives off a sort of nostalgic effect that even those who weren’t born in the ’80s or ’90s will feel.
As she says in the video, Lipa is not in New York (where Tiny Desk Concerts are typically held) but in London. Obviously, with the pandemic, she was not able to travel. However, she is still “at home” — meeting the home requirement of the Tiny Desk Home Concert.
Lipa’s choice of stage setting was not an unintentional one considering the name of her latest album: Future Nostalgia. The reason why all her songs have hints of the kind of stuff you’d find your parents listening to is that Lipa wanted to combine the music she listened to as a child with 21st-century pop.
The concert starts with Lipa’s song “Levitating.” It combines modern hip hop with ’80s disco beats. The Tiny Desk version gives a more relaxed atmosphere to the song in which Lipa’s voice combined with that of her vocalists really gets to shine. Click here to watch Tiny Desk: “Levitating”
Levitating is also special in that includes spoken-word rap. Lipa was inspired by Blondie (a rock artist popular in the ‘70s).
My love is like a rocket, watch it blast off
And I’m feeling so electric, dance my ass off
And even if I wanted to, I can’t stop
(Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
If you haven't seen the video before, it incorporates elements of 70s disco. It starts off with Lipa on the hood of a classic car, but with just a few lines, she’s already transformed into a bedazzled blue Versace dress and donned the nameplate necklace (with song lyric “Sugaboo”) an item very popular in the ’70s. The setting of the song takes place in a disco-themed elevator that mimics a club. With your classic disco ball and boys and girls on skates dancing across the floor, “Levitating” is fast, upbeat, and would make anyone just wanna get down and boogie.
Lipa then slides into the slower and soft-spoken “Pretty Please”. The song incorporates Electro R&B track, disco-pop, and various instruments ranging from the simple guitar to the eccentric cowbell. Click here to watch Tiny Desk: “Pretty Please”
Next up is Lipa’s personal favorite song on the album: “Love Again”. This soulful song is a dance-pop, disco, and electro song, with a classic sound. It tells a story of Lipa giving up on love at the first, to her opening up and finding it again in a new partner at the end. Click here to watch Tiny Desk: “Love Again”
“It’s about manifesting good things into your life when things are quite going your way,” Lipa says. The song is literally about loving again.
I never thought that I would find a way out
I never thought I’d hear my heart beat so loud
I can’t believe there’s something left in my chest anymore
But goddamn, you got me in love again
Finally, the concert ends with Lipa’s most popular song “Don’t Start Now.” The music video depicts Lipa at a club, freshly sprung from a bad breakup and just looking to have fun with her friends. She states to her ex in bullet point form:
“Don’t show up, don’t come out
Don’t start caring about me now
Walk away, you know how
Don’t start caring about me now”
She warns her ex to stay away unless he wants to disappoint himself — seeing how fine she is doing without him. The song also uses nu-disco (a 21st century spin on disco) style and cowbells to express Lipa’s newfound freedom. Click here to watch Tiny Desk: “Don’t Start Now”
You’ll notice that with the Tiny Desk Concert, Lipa’s voice gets to shine more. She is stripped of all the heavy effects, lighting, makeup, and clothing used in her videos, and we just get to hear her with some simple backup vocals, bass, and guitar. The music videos are great and show off her creativity, but here we get to see her raw talent and it by no means needs any additional help by auto-tune.
Future Nostalgia is a chart-topping album and her Tiny Desk Concert’s stage and sound only add to that nostalgia. Future generations will look back and be “nostalgic” for this Dua Lipa.
Check out Dua Lipa’s Tiny Desk Concert below:
SETLIST
- “Levitating”
- “Pretty Please”
- “Love Again”
- “Don’t Start Now”
