Dua Lipa has a knack for providing the world with exactly what it needs. In 2020, while humanity wrestled with an unprecedented pandemic, her take on future nostalgia, a concept that nodded to the past while pushing pop dazzlingly forwards, culminated in one of the best albums of the year. Four years later, with a world ravaged by division and war, the Londoner is dosing us with some much-needed radical optimism.
The power of positive thinking is a lyrical theme of her third album, but it’s not the only thing on Lipa’s mind. While Beyoncé is venturing into country music and Taylor Swift is wallowing in yet another gloomy break-up album, Lipa appears to be the quintessential pop star we need right now. With a brace of 2023 hits in her back pocket – one of them the ubiquitous Dance the Night, from Barbie (in which she also made her big-screen acting debut), the other the effervescent Houdini – she has indubitably set the bar high.
Lipa teased fans by claiming that this new collection was influenced by the spirit of 1990s Britpop, but it was presumably an abstract inspiration. That said, it’s clear one of her producers and cowriters, Kevin Parker of Tame Impala, has had an effect on this album. The Australian musician’s devotion to 1970s psychedelia makes itself heard on songs like Houdini, Training Season and Whatcha Doing?
The spry Illusion, one of several tracks primed for a clubby remix, nods to the disco sound pilfered on Future Nostalgia; the cantering beat of Falling Forever is perhaps the closest Lipa has come to a power ballad. Yet the sombre moments are few and far between on this predominantly upbeat and succinct collection (only one song breaks four minutes); even the quirky, brilliant Anything for Love begins as a soft piano ballad before unexpectedly breaking into a delightfully funky strut.
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All in all, Lipa sounds to have done a lot of growing up since 2020. Some of Radical Optimism’s songs celebrate new love, such as the buoyantly idealistic End of an Era. Others, such as Illusion, are cautionary tales, while the chic French Exit and Happy for You, on which she wishes her ex and his new girlfriend well, are wistful recollections of former flames.
At no point, however, does Lipa revel in sadness: the point of Radical Optimism, it seems, is to keep things moving forward at all costs. In her own words, it is an album about “euphoria, togetherness”. To the listener, it feels like the pop album we’ve been waiting for.
