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Dua Lipa noticed it coming. The fireworks and flags and pulsing purple lights, the youngsters on tiptoes scowling at unusual adults as they fling their arms within the air like cash. When she was a lady, the 28-year-old born to Albanian-Kosovan mother and father, tells us halfway into her debut Glastonbury headline show, she wrote it down – “I’ll headline Glastonbury” – manifesting the sleeper hits and demanding acclaim and now-routine awards and No 1s that made this second inevitable.
“I used to be actually particular,” she provides after a shy giggle. “I mentioned I wished to headline the Pyramid stage on a Friday evening, as a result of then I knew I might get together for the subsequent two days.” Her voice cracks as she describes the magic – “the ability” – of commanding this seemingly infinite crowd. “Little me would simply be beside herself proper now.”
The rising Dua Lipa empire – now encompassing an appearing profession, a guide membership, a burgeoning media platform and a podcast that includes giants of excessive and low tradition – reveals no indicators of slowing, significantly now she has purchased again the rights to her music catalogue. But behind the cultural dominance, Dua Lipa is as enigmatic as she is ubiquitous. Her arrestingly obscure persona (alongside, maybe, along with her admirable help for geopolitical causes) has stopped her transcending bankable fame to change into a real nation’s sweetheart.
Which can be simply how she likes it. Greater than a straight pop spectacle, Lipa intersperses tonight’s set with nods to underground tradition. As a martial drum solo opens the present, leather-clad dancers fling themselves throughout a pair of metallic bridges, like a Swat workforce despatched undercover into Seventies New York’s meatpacking district. In a chain-lined leather-based gown of her personal, Lipa zips to centre stage as if propelled by the rollerskates favoured on her final enviornment tour, barrelling right into a party-starting “Coaching Season”.
Although the efficiency is tightly drilled – even the confetti deployment appears studied – ardour rings by means of in moments of cheeky theatricality. Halfway into the second verse, she flings again her head with revulsion on the inept exes she has made her muse.
It’s no contradiction that many such boyfriends are little question on this discipline screaming alongside: the gospel of Dua holds that, whereas guys typically suck, that’s typically positive, and form of humorous. Her mastery is in pairing these tales of woe and self-redemption with music that appears like by accident having one of the best evening of your life on the worst membership in your hometown.
Her celebration of other tradition is most readily obvious on “One Kiss” – given a home breakdown worthy of Glastonbury’s splendidly lurid queer nightlife hang-out, NYC Downlow – and “Fairly Please”, revitalised with deliciously soiled funk swing and a breakdancing interlude that squeezes homages to her home, disco and rave roots into two breathtaking minutes of helter-shelter beat switches.
Between all this she finds time to introduce a comically low-key visitor look: not certainly one of her celeb buddies however an unassuming Kevin Parker – higher often known as the Australian psych-rock darling Tame Impala – who appears to be like each bit the slacker boyfriend introduced residence to disillusioned mother and father after their beloved daughter’s hole 12 months. In honour of his contributions to her newest album, Radical Optimism, Parker mooches out in a T-shirt and denims for an endearingly clumsy duet of his tune “The Much less I Know the Higher”.
Except for the electrifying opener, new album cuts resembling “These Partitions“ and “Falling Without end” really feel like stodgy, virtually defensive inclusions – even nearer “Houdini“ can’t assist however really feel anticlimactic after a sensational one-two of “Bodily” and “Don’t Begin Now”. I can consider, even hope, that Dua Lipa will endure to headline Glastonbury once more, however it’s more durable to think about these songs surviving as setlist musts.
“Guys, you’re making my desires come true,” she declares throughout “Be the One”, a cliche that, regardless of the dips in momentum, makes clear that Lipa understood the project: Glastonbury isn’t just one other present, simply one other pageant – it’s the second we have now been ready for, all day, all 12 months, maybe all our lives. The perfect headline units flip this right into a actuality, even among the many sceptical. Dua Lipa does one thing virtually as particular: by bearing out her childhood premonition, she makes us witnesses to her personal sweetest fantasy.
