4 Johnson
Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia
Carol Johnson
Department of American Studies, IUPUI
AMST-A354: Literature of Rock and Roll
Dr. Josh Gosney
May 31, 2020
Introduction
Dua Lipa’s latest album Future Nostalgia is an album that has a multitude of songs that cover topical issues, like relationships, sex, and the standards into which women are treated differently than men. The album has reached acclaim from both listeners and critics because of the unique sound that Dua Lipa has crafted for the album, as well as the different messages that the album contains.
The Sounds of the Album
The album has many influences that set it apart from others of the last decade. Dua Lipa herself attributed the sound to artists like Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Moloko, Blondie, and Outkast. The 80’s sound is probably the nostalgia part of the album part, so listing Madonna as one of the inspiration makes a lot of sense for more than one reason. Madonna became well known for not only her theatrics but because of the messages her music contained. Madonna was one of the first women in music to flaunt her sexuality in both her music videos and her lyrics. That is a common practice seen nowadays by different female artists in all sorts of genre music. Blondie, a band that features a woman frontman, is one that carries a more punk or rock vibe to rival Madonna’s pop vibe. Blondie was still revolutionary though, like Madonna. The male-dominated market allowed for Blondie to succeed in a time when rock and roll were being made by men. Dua Lipa’s album shows this really well with the feminine tones and as well as talking about sex casually.
There are also a lot of hip-hop influences on the album. Today, the most popular music is hip-hop, especially among youths. Pop music is no stranger to using hip-hop samples in music to make it fit the current trends. Dua Lipa listed Outkast as one of her inspirations. Outkast is an artist that almost anyone who listened to the radio knows about because of his popular songs “Hey Ya” and “Miss Jackson”. His songs are upbeat and have an energy that is uniquely him. This translates very well to Dua Lipa’s album. All her songs are upbeat, something that can be danced too. This is something that hip-hop music does well. The heavy bass and the rhythms can be infectious and allow for people to dance. Like Ann Power’s says in her review of Daft Punk’s R.E.M. album, “One one level, these changes seem to serve nostalgia instead of the current dance music ideal of rapidly accelerating progress, (Powers, 24). Dance music like Dua’s is a little different from Daft Punk’s, but the aching for both nostalgia and expanding on the genre of dance music fits perfectly for them both.
Dance music has also been a trend. I made an earlier reference to the app “Tik Tok”. The app is used for a variety of content in short-form video, but the most popular trend on the app is dancing. Dancing videos on “Tik Tok” get millions of views and can tend to bleed on to other social media platforms. Creating an album that can be danced to is something that can make or break an album for its popularity.
Dua Lipa’s own song “Don’t Start Now” was used in a trend on the app, which is a significant factor in how well both the album and the song did chart-wise. Radio stations have even started having “Tik Tok” hours and play songs that are popular on app, taking a break from the normal top forty. Dua Lipa even references a popular dance song that is used on the app called “Renegade” in her song Levitating, “The Milky Way, we’re renegading, (Dua Lipa “Levitating”).
“Tik Tok” is very of the moment though and Dua is not shy of using other pop culture references in her song. The question is, do they date song? When most people think of good music, they think of songs that are timeless, that can fit into any moment in time. That’s why songs about love are so popular. Love is a timeless feeling and no matter how dated the sound of the song is because it’s what the lyrics say that make song related through all time. I personally think songs can be like a time capsule but can still stand the test of time. For example, “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel is a song that is made of exclusively reference to political and historical moments of the time when the song was written. The message is still what makes the song listenable to today, that the world has been crazy and always will be crazy.
Dua Lipa naming a popular American modernist architect in one of her songs and using references to a popular dance trend is not something that will date the song because they show a moment in history that has a feeling. Using the name of a famous contemporary architect shows a feeling about bringing something new to the world. The reference to the popular dance shows that children are being care-free and sharing something with themselves. Referencing things that are in the moment is something that has been done knowing how to make it still make sense in the future. Dua Lipa has done that by capturing the timeless feelings of the moment.
Girl Power
One of the major themes of Dua Lipa’s album is girl power and female sexuality. Most of her songs take the female perspective to issues like dating, sex, and then society’s treatment of girls versus boys. To explain the context in which the songs cover, female sexuality is something that is something people are still getting used to seeing on display. There is a general disconnect between generations because of how society treats women in each generation. The older generations commonly referred to as “Boomers” or “Gen X” had a culture of women being more reserved. Despite movements that they lived through, there is still a lingering sense of women needed to be more modest and conform to long-standing traditions of women not talking or exploring their sexuality. When it comes to the younger generations, there has been a complete turn on those beliefs, and females have been showcasing their sexuality.
A particular song of Dua Lipa’s on the album tackles this issue. The song “Boys Will Boys” is a song that talks specifically about the treatment of young girls versus boys that continue on to adulthood. “It’s second nature to walk home before the sun goes down/And put your keys between your knuckles when there’s boys around/Isn’t it funny how we laugh it off to hide our fear/When there’s nothing funny here? (Dua Lipa “Boys Will Be Boys”)” Here Dua Lipa is citing a huge difference between men and women. Women have been taught to always be on the guard because of actions that men could possibly do. She is saying that instead of teaching men not to rape and assault women, women have to learn how to appease men for their safety and to always expect the worse.
The song’s chorus “Boys will be, boys will be, boys will be boys/ And girls will be women (Dua Lipa “Boys Will Be Boys”)” shows that young men’s behavior gets written off as playful or beyond their control, but girls from a young have to be held accountable and to higher standards than that of men. Girls have to grow up faster while boys are allowed to be boys. This song is the one I find most impactful on the album because it captures a feeling that all women will relate to in some way. This also comes in the time of the “#MeToo” movement which is a movement based on females speaking out against their abusers and people who have assaulted them to show how common it is.
Another aspect of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia is that she shows her own sexuality in her songs “Good in Bed”, “Cool”, and “Pretty Please”. These songs are all about her craving sex. She does not use metaphors to get her point across like both females and males have had to do for decades, but she instead gets straight to the point. Women celebrating their sexuality for the world to see is something that is still looked down upon. Thinking of Piers Morgan calling out Ariana Grande for being too sexual for kids, Ariana Grande made the point that her songs are not for children and that she is simply expressing herself. That is what Dua Lipa is doing with her sexually charged songs. She is expressing her own sexuality and then allowing people to relate to her. She is celebrating being a woman in the most primal sense and making the point that relationships and sex do not have to be male-dominated.
Female dominance in relationships is also a concept that society has been struggling with. The fact that women want and crave sex and are capable of having a voice in a relationship is something that is just now being showcased. In the past, media portrayals of relationships in which the woman is strong, it is shown as the man in the relationship being emasculated constantly and a joke. It has either been a case of the female being submissive to the point of abuse, or the man being the butt of all jokes because his female counterpart is strong. The songs like “Pretty Please” show a balance between them. It is written from a perspective in which the female wants sex and is not ashamed of that, but then also still gives power to the other party.
Overall, Future Nostalgia is an album that shows a change in culture. It highlights many blasts of the pasts but then showcases new trends like “Tik Tok” and the cultural change of how women are viewed in society. This album does not come off preachy about women’s issues as all the songs are still enjoyable without allowing the lyrics to sink in, but they can still make an impact when someone listens more closely. This is, in my personal opinion, one of the greatest albums that have been released in the past decade because of not only the sounds but the messages of the album.
References
Lipa, Dua. “Levitating” Future Nostalgia. By Dua Lipa, Sarah Hudson, Clarence Coffee Jr. & KOZ. Perf. Dua Lipa. March 2020.Stuart Price and KOZ, 2020.MP3.
Lipa, Dua. “Boys Will Be Boys” Future Nostalgia. By Justin Tranter, Kennedi, Jason Evigan & Dua Lipa. Perf. Dua Lipa. March 2020.KOZ, 2020.MP3.
Powers, Ann. (2015). Robots in Ecstasy: Daft Punk’s Memories Embraces The Pleasure Principle. How to Write About Music, 24-26.