My 2020 discovery - Dua Lipa

In the emotionally strenuous climate of the coronavirus pandemic, the generic, catchy forms of pop music provide a refreshing relief from the uncertainty gripping society.

Source: Flickr.

2020 has taught us a lot about what we want. In the same way that shops, pubs and restaurants have closed except the bare necessities, I think the pandemic has taught us what we really need and desire from culture. What are the films I want to watch when I just cannot be bothered? What is the book I want to read when a Penguin Classic just seems a bit much right now? What is the music I want to listen to which makes me feel absolutely nothing? 

My own musical answer to this search has been Dua Lipa. To anyone who knows me, this is mental. For the last three years, my life has been surrounded by undeniably depressing artists. I adore Radiohead, and in my last year of school bought an overcoat and noisy brogues and relished pretending to be Nick Cave getting on the Tube.  

I used to get asked, “don’t you find listening to that much Radiohead depressing?” I did not even think about that — the answer was no. It took the coronavirus pandemic to make me realise that, if life is not going as smoothly as mine luckily was when Thom Yorke lived in my ears, music adding to your existential ennui is not the best idea. In other words, to enjoy Radiohead, perversely, you kind of have to be happy. 

When I look through my 2020 Spotify Wrapped, of course I see the worthy stuff — Interpol soundtracked the earlier part of my year, I got into Jon Hopkins and my discovery of Phoebe Bridgers over the summer soundtracked the surprisingly free few months we were able to have in the UK. But as the second lockdown hit, the nights got darker, and the virus mutated, my November and December listening became packed with Dua. 

The catalyst was the release of “Levitating” in October, repackaged as a single featuring DaBaby. It is awful. The lyrics are so vapid. She does not look like she wants to be there in the music video. DaBaby rocks up and drops one of the worst verses I have ever heard. The “Behind the Scenes of Levitating with Dua Lipa and DaBaby” video put out by the label is 31 seconds long, features only alternative angles of the edited video, and does not feature a single spoken word from Dua or DaBaby. It all makes me feel absolutely nothing. It sounds like an algorithmic song, and the video was literally produced with TikTok, for God’s sake. It is a slave to the market, and for all of these reasons it was absolutely what I needed. 

My favourite bit is the pre-chorus: “You want me, I want you baby / My sugar boo, I’m levitating / The Milky Way, we’re renegading [and then, gloriously sacking it in a line early] / yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah”. 

My lockdown was horrible — I had an existential crisis and my dog died. For a few days after, I could not bear to listen to any music. My Spotify was suggesting “I Know The End” by Phoebe Bridgers, a song I had loved in the heady days of September, but listening to it then would have been the emotional equivalent of putting 40 Mentos into a litre-sized bottle of Coke. 

The first song I was able to listen to on my return to music was “Levitating”. The banality, the carefree attitude, the lack of shame, the stridency, the sound of what an algorithm would throw up for you — being deprived of free will in what I wanted to listen to was what I needed. I was a slave to its catchiness. “Levitating” is the sound of confidence, a much-needed tonic to a year defined by uncertainty. 

If you, like me, have been a young cynic for years, convinced that “pop music” has gone to hell in a handcart, then the music of 2020, spearheaded by Dua Lipa, should be the antidote to your scoffing. I have sold Dua’s music harshly — there is some brilliant disco pop on her album (“Future Nostalgia”, “Don’t Start Now”, “Hallucinate”), as well as the imprisoningly catchy “Good in Bed”. “Future Nostalgia” has been the album that has caused me to look again at listening to the charts, and in return I have found lots of brilliance, and a challenge to my former hypothesis that pop music was in a state of inexorable decline. Doja Cat was entertaining me before she got cancelled, “Watermelon Sugar” was on repeat for days, and I belatedly discovered Cardi B. I was all the happier for it.

So, if you find yourself ranting at Pitchfork for making WAP their song of the year and lamenting that AC/DC’s new album is not being talked about anywhere near enough, put “Future Nostalgia” on and you might find yourself being a little bit less boring.

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