Dua Lipa and Callum Turner were immortalized on April 27 in sunny New York, between lunch in a Thai restaurant in Manhattan and a walk in SoHo. Both showed off a look of duty: he wore a burgundy bomber jacket which he paired with black jeans and white sneakers, while she wore a black coat paired with black trousers and black and white loafers. Both wearing sunglasses, they went shopping more united than ever.
The world star, winner of three GRAMMYs and seven BRIT Awards and recently named among the 100 most influential people in the world by the Times which dedicated its cover to her, releases her highly anticipated third album, Radical Optimism, tomorrow, Friday 3 May. The album, composed of 11 songs, also contains the global hits “Houdini” which was the most played international song on the radio in Italy for 9 weeks (4 of which were at No. 1), “Training Season”, the foreign single most played on the radio for seven weeks and the song that anticipated the album “Illusion”.
Inspired by Dua’s self-discovery, Radical Optimism is an album that taps into the pure joy and happiness of having clarity in situations that once seemed impossible to face. The hard goodbyes and vulnerable beginnings that once threatened to crush the soul become milestones as you choose optimism and begin to move gracefully through the chaos. Rolling Stone called the album “pop bliss”, noting that it is “uniquely and totally Dua Lipa: confident dance pop, full of witty banter ready for Instagram captions”.
Infused with the energy of Dua’s hometown of London, the spirit of the album embodies the rawness, honesty, confidence and freedom of ’90s Britpop. Radical Optimism transports the listener into a dreamy pop world rich in musicality, unapologetic in lyrics and liberating in sounds.
“A couple of years ago, a friend introduced me to the term Radical Optimism. It’s a concept that struck me and intrigued me more and more as I started playing with it and incorporating it into my life,” says Dua. “I was struck by the idea of walking through chaos with grace and feeling able to weather any storm. At the same time, I found myself looking at the music history of psychedelia, trip hop and Britpop. It always seemed so confidently optimistic, and this attitude and honesty are feelings I brought into my recording sessions.”
“The record as a whole is more mature. Honestly, I think I’m not the same person I was when I wrote the first album. I’ve evolved and learned a lot of things. I have different thoughts, desires, needs and visions,” she says.
Dua worked with a team of key collaborators throughout the project, including Caroline Ailin, Danny L. Harle, Tobias Jesso Jr. and Kevin Parker, the eclectic Australian multi-instrumentalist and leader of the psychedelic band Tame Impala.
Radical Optimism is the work that affirms the artistic maturity of the pop star who became the first female artist to have four songs with over two billion streams on Spotify (“One Kiss”, “Don’t Start Now”, “New Rules” and “Levitating”), as well as having collected more than 280 Platinum Records worldwide in just 6 years of career.
This new project arrives four years after Future Nostalgia, the album that definitively consecrated her to the center of international attention, thanks to that skilful recovery (nostalgic but also modern) of disco and dance pop sounds that guaranteed her two Grammy and a stay of almost three years at the top of the charts, also thanks to an acclaimed world tour and comes after the cinematic success of Barbie where she participated in a cameo and in the creation of the soundtrack with the hit song “Dance the Night” .
