Review: Dua Lipa "Radical Optimism" (2024)

Originally posted May 2024

This year I’ve taken on a ‘get with it, man’ Project, having been progressively out of touch for twenty-five years. In an early post, I said that I’d review a brand new album by a new band/artist before the year was out. ‘Radical Optimism’ dropped (yea, that’s right, I say 'dropped' now)) on May 3^rd. To me, Dua Lipa is a new artist. I can hear the voices of those ten or so years younger than me exclaiming ‘she’s been around 8 years....... hardly ‘new’’. Just this once, I'll indulge in that condescending older person thing and say ‘ahhh, these younguns, bless um. I used to think like that. They’ll learn soon enough’. In truth, its a fair point. Nonetheless, it is a huge step closer for me.

A few months ago, because the project had changed my listening habits, Spotify identified me as a ‘Top Fan of Dua Lipa’. In my head I jumped up, pumped my fists in the air and shouted ‘yea! It’s working! I’m doing it! I’m getting ‘with it’! The algorithms that control us on the Internet believed I was a big Dua Lipa fan. I was embracing it, although in a kind of ironic way. That said, I was finding I genuinely quite liked her. This is noteworthy because, although I heard and enjoyed some of her songs before (‘Be The One’ & ‘One Kiss’ in particular) I had no idea they were her. Furthermore, there was one track I DID know was Dua Lipa.  ‘Cold Heart’ - a mashup of a couple of Elton John numbers. I. Do. Not. Like. That. Track. So, I was actually approaching Dua Lipa from a negative standpoint.  

‘Houdini’ was one of the 1^st tracks I heard when I began my project and the 1^st I thought ‘you know what, that one’s alright’ about. I kept it on my ‘top ten UK chart singles’ playlist I had created long after it fell out the top ten. There’s  a disco/80s synth feel to her music often punctuated with funk-style bass lines that I really enjoy. Her fairly low-register voice (possibly contralto in classical terms) with its distinct tone draws me in more than most I hear. Also, having done some cursory research on her, I respect her background and the journey she took to get where she is. Her success feels deserved.

So...... Radical Optimism, her 3^rd album, was preceded by 3 singles ‘Houdini’, ‘Training Season’, and ‘Illusion’ – all UK top ten hits. I’ve not listened to a Dua Lipa album before and a few general points stand out. There is very little deviation from the style of music I outlined above. Also, the song-writing (which as I understand it is a team of people but with Dua Lipa very much at the helm) is fairly formulaic. This is applicable to most pop music because pop songs are usually writing in.......... song form! Verse Chorus Verse Chorus decorated with intros, bridges, middle 8s and outros (the non verse or chorus bits being very brief in the case of Dua Lipa).

The Dua Lipa formula, at least on this album, goes a little further. It usually starts with something I really like – a red herring. ‘End Of An Era’ start with a few seconds of a squeaky wind instrument-like synth sequence that is seemingly irrelevant to the song. ‘These Walls’ begins with a piano arpeggio figures. Although they outline the chord progression that dominates the song, they suggests a feel to the music that disappears as soon as the Dua Lipa style kicks in. ‘Whatcha Doing’ opens with a ‘spacey’ feel that doesn’t reflect the actual song (although in this case it is sprinkled in the background during the track). The beginning of ‘Illusion’ starts with a single piano chord in the high register but then the usual style takes over. ‘Happy For You’ opens with an atmospheric make up of tweeting birds and a sound of synth/voices that cuts just before the song begins (although this one returns at the end). ‘Anything For Love’ is the biggest red herring of all. It begins with voices in a room with bass (possibly a double bass) and piano warming up. They then start to perform and it seems we are getting something akin to parlour music. Eventually the usual kicks in and we are back to familiar territory. However, this is not the only red herring. Towards the end, we hear some high register synth chords that we haven’t had yet. Given that the track is very short, it seems like we are hearing the launch of something new beginning, but it then just fades away and we are back to the voices in the room as the track concludes. I do enjoy the way we are constantly thrown in a different direction than we were expecting even though we end up exactly where we WERE expecting before the red herring was sounded. Its sort of like ‘DANGER!!!! Nah nah only joking’.

The Dua Lipa formula even extends to how verses/choruses are structured melodically and lyrically. The sections usually split into 2. The 1^st half of the verses lyrically outline some sort of position e.g., an intro to what the song is about. The 2^nd offers a  ‘however’ coupled with a variation in the melody. An example of this is ‘Illusion’ with “I’ve been known to miss a red flag....”. Then the ‘however’ – “I already know you’re type....” where the melody changes and is rhythmically contrasting with its rapid fire syllables (quavers or semi-quavers to use muso-terminology). The choruses do something similar. They make a statement, in the case of ‘Houdini’ – the singles sums up her personality with “I’m not hear for long, catch me or I go Houdini” with a repeated melodic figure. The choruses then give another ‘however’ with a new repeated melodic figure that is usually higher than the 1^st. The ‘however’ in ‘Houdini’ is “if you’re good enough [ ] maybe you could cause a girl to change her ways”.

Musically, the tracks often opt for a minor key, and when analytically stripped back are melodically based on a descending minor scale. This is identified the easiest in the melodic figure for the verses of ‘Houdini’. It can also be heard in ‘End Of An Era’, ‘Training Season’ (Choruses), ‘French Exit’, ‘Illusion’ (although in the chord progression rather than the vocal melody), and ‘Maria’ (a keyboard figure in the chorus).  

Interesting, in the rarer cases when a major key is opted for, the melodic figures, in contrast, are usually ascending. Rhythmically, the music is quite ‘busy’.  There tends to be a lot of parts playing fast rhythms, often over a strong thudding bass drum that keeps the pulse grounded. This is important as there are often rhythms with a lot of syncopation, where things are placed off-beat. This is best illustrated in ‘Illusion’. There is a repeated descending chord figure in the choruses. In each four bar phrase, after the initial 1^st beat (the ‘downbeat’) of the 1^st bar, the chords change on beats 4½ & 1½. This really throws things off with such an emphasis the 2 off-beats either side of the downbeat. Lyrically, the subject matter tends to be fairly standard ‘negative love’ I.e., ‘I’ve been in/am in a bad relationship and it needs to end/has ended’ or ‘I gave them all my love but it wasn’t enough1’...... that sort of thing.

I’ve talked before in reviews about ‘the album as an art-form’ and how, rightly or wrongly, I view this as an important element. So. How does ‘Radical Optimism’ hold up to this? As it turns out, it does OK. Firstly, I really like the title and the cover artwork which is a picture of Dua in the ocean with a shark headed right toward her, which illustrates that title well. It opens fairly strikingly with the few seconds of squeaky synth sequence I mentioned followed by keyboard and bass flip-flopping between two chords using an on-beat-off-beat pattern. This last just a few bars before a classic “1 2 3 hey/yey” like ‘Let’s start the song but let’s also start the party’. A thudding bass drum and funk-like bass guitar enters with Dua singing a verse before everything kicks in properly and we are ‘Full Dua Lipa”. I often talk about melody and its pretty strong melodic writing here. It is largely based on the descending minor scale I talked about above. In fact you can hear that explicitly in its most basic form with the line “when I see your face”. This leads me to talk about harmony because it’s quite interesting. Its based largely around two harmonically rich chords F-major-7^th and G-major-7^th. However, if you were to analyse the melody in isolation you would probably argue that we are looking at A-minor and B-minor. Therefore, I’d argue we are looking at F-major and A-minor juxtaposed (and the same with other 2 chords) which is technically just the same as F-major-7^th but is subtly different if you think about it in each opposing way while listening.

Overall stylistically it sets up the album well – its like a summary of the sound of the album. That’s a point in favour of this track as an opener, but does lead me to a criticism. Before I make the criticism I want to be clear that I am not saying the tracks ‘all sound the same’. I would argue strongly against that. However, the first track does basically summarise the style and ‘sound’ you are going to get. There’s very little deviation from it. You aren’t going to get a ‘stripped back’ track or one with an added orchestra. You aren’t going to get a piano/vocal ballad. You aren’t going to get anything down-tempo like Celine Dion ‘My Heart Will Go On’ or up-tempo like Spice Girls ‘Wannabe’ or something more atmospheric like Phil Collins ‘In The Air Tonight’ (incidentally, the latter is a sound I think Dua Lipa would pull off well). So, to reiterate, the tracks don’t all sound the same per se, but there’s not much in the way of  definitive contrast or obvious displays of versatility here. There’s a style/sound to the album and Dua sticks to it 90% of the time. Thinking about it, it ties the album together. Maybe its even a plus point in that sense.

There is something definitely lacking, though. The first time I listened, I got to the end.... waited... waited.... ‘oh, is that it?’  I couldn’t put my finger on why I thought that because the last track itself, ‘Happy For You’  is a good closer to the album. It has a good melody and thoughtful lyric that is punctuated by a 2^nd echo-y vocal that responds to the main lyric as if its a voice of hindsight inside the singer’s head wishing she’d figured out her feelings sooner. So, the answer wasn’t ‘its a disappointing ending’. I took a few more listens to work out that it was partly because of my criticism in the previous paragraph, but more because I can’t identify a ‘peak’ or ‘wow’ moment of the album. The music seems to forever hint at it (especially with those red herrings) but doesn’t ever quite deliver it.

I do view 2^nd tracks as important component to an album. I still think ‘Houdini’ is a strong contender for best track on this album so no complaints from me there. In fact, there was something really subtle that caught my ear that I’d barely thought about throughout months of listening to it prior to the album. As the beat is about to enter, there’s a little “OK’”. I’d paid little attention to it in previous listens but now it feels like ‘I’ve done the intro, so now let’s get down to business. OK let’s do this’. Its funny how something can change with a different context. It’s a tiny thing that I mention as an example of why I value the ‘album’. Listening to a track in isolation can be a completely different experience, at least me for, than listening to it in the context of an album. ‘Houdini’ is well placed as a strong 2^nd track. I also do like the analogy of Houdini, even though it doesn’t actually bear the weight of close analysis.

There’s a few points of the album where I’m a bit less impressed than elsewhere. The tracks ‘Whatcha Doing’ and ‘Falling Forever’ are OK but I wouldn’t be upset if you told me I’d never hear them again. I have mixed feelings about ‘These Walls’. It actually has a really good melody and I like the way a sliding guitar sound shadows the bouncy melody of the chorus. However, when I first listened to it I felt something wasn’t quite gelling. I thought it was probably that the happy bouncy music didn’t quite match lyric “if these walls could talk they’d tell us to break up”, unless it was musical irony. That doesn’t seem very ‘Dua Lipa’ so I ruled it out as unlikely. Then it hit me. The main reason the music sounds ‘happy’ is, of course, because it’s in a major key. I don’t think writing in major keys is Dua Lipa and her song-writing team’s wheelhouse. Indeed, the track ‘Anything For Love’ has a similar problem. It’s in 2 halves. The 1^st is ok with its piano, bass and vocal setting, but once the beat and full ensemble takes over, it goes a bit plain and uninteresting. And.... guess what?...... its in a major key.

Although I’ve complained there’s no ‘peak’ or ‘wow’ moments there are some tracks I hold in quite high regard. ‘French Exit’ is probably my favourite track on the album. It has a great feel to it with a brilliant shuffling drum figure. They must know this sounds good because it acts as a slightly extended solo intro before everything else joins in (including some guitar playing that reminds me of Craig David songs). There’s arguably the best melodic figure of the album in the chorus. There’s also some great subtleties that decorate the song such as clapping for just the odd bar, a synth flute figure, and some sliding synth strings in the chorus. There’s also something about the ways she's half saying/half singing ‘french exit’ with an echo-effect in the ‘however’ section of my Dua Lipa Formula. Its like the ‘however’ in this case is ‘however, I’ve already gone’. Perhaps there’s something of a theme here given the Houdini analogy earlier in the album.

I also really like ‘Maria’ that somewhat strips back the full Dua Lipa sound so that an acoustic guitar can come to the foreground. This gives the track that slight Spanish/Latin feel that often does (even if that is a bit cliche), presumably to match the name Maria. The chorus actually features limited vocals which just cry ‘Maria’ for the 1^st few lines in favour of a melodic wind-instrument sound (probably keyboard) figure that’s very pleasant. Whistle along rather than sing along. I do think I’ve heard that melody on a well-known track in the past – a dance track I think – but couldn’t get my brain to identify it and Google didn’t help me with that.

I initially embraced my ‘Top Dua Lipa Fan’ label ironically but I’ve been becoming quite the ‘actual’ fan, and this album hasn’t turned me off.  I will almost certainly be popping it on again from time to time. If you already like Dua Lipa, I can’t imagine you'd dislike the album. Similarly, if you already do NOT like Dua Lipa then I can’t imagine this is going to anything for you. If you’re on the fence or just don’t know, then I’d give it a go. It’s good pop music. But, if you’re really not feeling it after 2 or 3 tracks then it’s probably safe to bail out (although maybe give my ‘Stand Out Tracks’ list a whirl before abandoning ship’). I’ve got some further tasks to complete before I’ve got a full handle on Dua Lipa. I’m unfamiliar with her previous 2 albums and I haven’t watched any footage of her performing live. I do know she had suffered criticism dull live performances. This is a big part of people’s moaning about this year’s Glastonbury line-up, as she is a headliner. I think I’m going to save viewing videos of her live until that is broadcast. And, I look forward to it.

So that leaves me to conclude with my mark out of ten. I’ll pop a key for this at the bottom that very crudely explains my marks. I will have to give a more detailed explanation of my marking system at some point. Until next time.

6/10

Stand Out Tracks

Houdini

French Exit

Illusion

Maria

Marking Key (in a nutshell)

10 = only 3 albums in history.

9 = basically 10 (just not those 3)

8 = Outstanding

7 = Brilliant

6 = Good

5 = Average

4 = Lots of potential but below average

3 = Some good points but poor overall

2 = Poor

1 = Abysmal