gave a lengthy magazine interview, the first salvo on the promotional trail for her third album. It wasn’t very interesting – she’s smart enough to keep her private life and her opinions on anything contentious to herself in a world of over-sharing and constantly simmering online outrage – but there was one surprising detail.
That all sounds intriguing. It would clearly be a dramatic departure from the disco-house sound of 2020’s Future Nostalgia, while feeling curiously of the moment: all those artists reached their peak three decades ago, and 90s revivalism appears to be having a moment. A hankering after the era’s pre-9/11 optimism and pre-smartphone straightforwardness has meant Britpop references suddenly seem to be everywhere, asin this newspaper noted.
But it’s so far removed from what Dua Lipa has claimed it is that you find yourself frantically searching for evidence of what she might have meant.
You could drive yourself mad doing it, so perhaps it’s better to focus on what is here, rather than what isn’t. It’s sunlit and appealingly frothy – you could divine a lot from the fact that Radical Optimism was sent out to journalists under the pseudonym Candy Floss. That it lacks an immediately grabby pop anthem along the lines of Physical or New Rules doesn’t mean it lacks hooks: they’re just the kind that burrow under your skin without you noticing, as on singles Houdini and Illusion.
In a way, that seems very on-brand. Dua Lipa’s refusal to engage with the more soul-bearing aspects of 21st-century celebrity has made her the kind of pop star one suspects Andy Warhol might have had a lot of time for: a slightly remote, visually arresting space into which fans can project whatever they want.