Live review: Dua Lipa’s polished pop perfection from true ‘female alpha’
In Brisbane on Saturday night, British pop star Dua Lipa led a performance that was orchestral in its grandeur and symphonic in its execution | REVIEW
Live music done well can sometimes seem like a magic trick, and bigger venues tend to make the sleight of hand harder to disguise. When more than 10,000 people gather at an arena, having sacrificed their night in search of a good time, as they did at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on Saturday, the anticipation is all but tangible as the lights go down.
British pop singer-songwriter Dua Lipa would have been dreaming of moments like this in the lead-up to the release of her second album. Issued in late March 2020, Future Nostalgia was a dance-pop album expressly designed for dance floors and to be enjoyed en masse, but a pandemic put that plan on pause.
Nearly three years later, Lipa, 27, showed a capacity crowd on the first night of her Australian tour that she is keenly intent on making up for lost time. Backed by a four-piece band, four back-up singers and 12 dancers, she led a 90-minute performance that was orchestral in its grandeur and symphonic in its execution.
Now more than 80 shows into a world tour that began in February, the show contained many moving parts and several large set pieces. Each was delivered with such apparent effortlessness that when the band briefly departed after an hour in order to cede the stage to a bracket of riveting club numbers, the accumulated effect was breathtaking.
To complete the magic trick, nobody up there ever looked like they were working hard, even though they clearly were… incredibly so – and none more than Lipa, who absorbs and reflects the pressures placed on a modern pop star with aplomb.
Her voice is one of a kind, and a key attraction since she emerged from London less than a decade ago, but its husky timbre contains fascinating imperfections that add to the appeal; similarly, her dance moves are accomplished without coming across as overly polished.
In contrast to some pop stars who came before her, Lipa retains a sense of relatability; she seems like the sort of performer you might find after a gig down at the pub drinking a pint with her mates rather than holed up in a five-star hotel with her security detail.
She kept the between-song chatter to a minimum, other than noting halfway through that it had been a day of debuts: her first cuddle with a koala, the first time being licked on the face by a dingo, and her first show in Brisbane.
During the interstitial scenes, where her dancing and singing colleagues briefly took the focus, Lipa could be glimpsed dashing down the backstage stairs to meet her costume change. Her hunger to deliver a knockout show was inspiring, and her enthusiasm flowed into every aspect of the production.
New Rules, her 2017 megahit (combined YouTube and Spotify plays: 4.4b) appeared early in the set, with the crowd singing as one to her classic line on having the discipline to move on from a lover: “If you’re under him, you ain’t getting over him”.
The songs of Future Nostalgia featured prominently, from the Olivia Newton-John-sampling opener Physical to the closing encore of its first single, Don’t Start Now. Break My Heart was another highlight, with its chorus melody cleverly interpolating the distinctive guitar riff of INXS’s Need You Tonight.
The title track was the first encore, and Lipa strode out to the diamond-shaped centre stage to perform it solo, surrounded by her fans, with the musicians and singers at her back.
Written as an empowering ode to self-confidence, its lyrics self-describe the artist as a “female alpha”; her commanding delivery of that song in particular underscored its theme superbly.
The all-ages crowd ran the gamut from children with their parents to adults in their mid 50s. For the former group, if this was their first gig, there’s good news and bad: live music simply doesn’t get better than the polished pop perfection that filled the room on Saturday night, and they might live a long time before they see a show that comes close.
Dua Lipa’s tour continues in Sydney (Tuesday and Wednesday), followed by Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth (November 16).
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