Dua Lipa Brought Her Platinum Pop Catharsis to Dallas

Timing is everything in pop music. Few modern A-list acts understand that axiom better than Dua Lipa.

The British singer-songwriter dropped her second and latest LP, Future Nostalgia, on the cusp of the world closing down in 2020. As such, her sleek, pulsing songs soundtracked global isolation — irresistible dance parties with a limited guest list, sealed off from everything by necessity.

Now, over two years after Nostalgia arrived, the 26-year-old Grammy winner finds herself in a peculiar position: The irony of touring in 2022 behind an album titled Future Nostalgia, released in 2020, is almost too perfect.

Nonetheless, Lipa is making the most of her multi-platinum moment, as she demonstrated Sunday night to a nearly sold-out American Airlines Center. Over the course of roughly 95 minutes, Lipa performed the entirety of the album, tossing in a few bonus tracks from the Moonlight Edition of the record — among them, the loopy, gorgeous “We’re Good” — and a smattering of work from her 2017 self-titled debut (“New Rules,” “Be the One”).

“Thank you for having us,” Lipa said early on. “It’s such an honor to be on this stage, night after night. We’ve waited two years to do this, and we’re over halfway through our U.S. tour — it feels like it’s going by in a flash.”
Indeed, the night often felt like making up for lost time in that Lipa, backed by a dozen dancers, four backing vocalists and a live, four-piece band, defaulted to a maximalist mode, even during more intimate moments. Balloons, copious fog, a runway from the sprawling stage jutting deep into the floor teeming with screaming bodies, an enormous video screen flanked by restless lights, even an aerial gondola-like contraption — Lipa, armed with her sultry, strikingly powerful contralto voice and taking care to play to every corner of the room, ticked every box on the arena pop overload checklist.

Live, as on record, Lipa’s material is uniformly fantastic: “Don’t Start Now,” “Levitating,” “Break My Heart,” “Love Again,” nary a dud in that batch of bangers. Still, the spectacle occasionally suffocated the songs. Cramming four wardrobe changes into the span of 95 minutes is certainly a choice, as is padding out your show with extended dance interludes. With just two studio albums and a handful of guest appearances to her credit, there’s an argument to be made that the pop star doesn’t quite yet have enough material to sustain an extended arena extravaganza.
The sense of reach-exceeding-grasp reached its apex during the performance of “Cold Heart,” a song Lipa cut with Elton John and was obliged to include in Sunday’s setlist, owing to its chart-topping status.
Lipa wrapped herself in a pride flag and sang the hook — an amalgam of John’s “Rocket Man,” “Sacrifice” and “Kiss the Bride” — as a pre-recorded clip of John singing the pre-chorus (but not, weirdly, the song’s lone verse) played on the screen of a room which the flesh-and-blood John had last headlined just two days prior.

There was nowhere for Lipa to really go with the moment, no climax to build toward, so, surrounded by her dancers, she perfunctorily sang her bit and then … just ran off stage for another costume change. Perhaps she’d intended the moment as a display of LGBTIQA+ solidarity, which, given the current state of affairs in Texas, would have been rousing. As it was, the entire segment seemed stilted. Given the supple, dynamic flow of all else Sunday, it felt like a swing and a miss.
On the other hand, looking around the jam-packed room, it was difficult to find anyone having anything other than fun. The enthusiastic audience, cutting across all demographic lines (parents with children; lovers and friends; all colors, creeds and sexual persuasions), sang nearly every word of every song right back at the stage, blissful among the dazzling lights and thumping bass.

It’s been a grueling two years, and it's likely a safe bet Future Nostalgia helped more than a few in attendance Sunday night navigate some trying times, a glittering balm amid ceaseless calamity. Given that, there was the palpable sensation that this concert was as much about catharsis as it was diversion, something Dua Lipa was only too happy to deliver in abundance. Timing, as always, was everything.