Dua started her music career in 2015 and gained popularity with her first self-named album “ Dua Lipa”. I had known Dua Lipa for some time but never fully connected with her music until the premiere of her second album “ Future Nostalgia”. Future Nostalgia is an album that features neo-disco sound with a pop flare to it that gives it a futuristic vibe to the nostalgic 70’s/80’s/90’s music we all know and love. Her lyrics highlight love in various scenarios, weather it be through a breakup, intoxicating love or even just a physical one, she seemed to shake social media with the relatable and funky synth and dance sound. This timeless music seems to be a recurring genre in todays music industry as we have seen with other artists such as The Weekend and the Korean K-pop music group, TWICE, and various other music creators in the more recent years.
What seems to be important about the album is the element of disco playing a huge role throughout it. Disco in the 1970s was a form of liberation for members of minority groups as discrimination was an unfortunate reoccurrence. Disco allowed individuals of differing backgrounds and orientations to come together and be themselves in a musical setting, liberating themselves from the oppressive norms of society and were free to express love and individuality. Dua lipa through her sound and her lyrics demonstrate that theme of liberation. One of the songs in the album called “Don’t Start Now” is expressing liberation from a past relationship that ended on poor terms due to a neglectful love and how Lipa is doing better now than she was in the relationship. Dua Lipa further caters to the aspect of acceptance in her music video “ Physical” where she showed scenes of her wearing each color of the pride flag and dancers partnered with the same sex signifying a intimate relationship between the two. A lot of the songs in “Future Nostalgia” tend to express love for another individual which also reflects off of the idea that disco is a place and genre of love, lust and acceptance, especially in todays climate of issues regarding discrimination and isolation based off of skin and sexual orientation.
The premiere of “Future Nostalgia” is one of the many important musical sources for this generations liberation and sense of community. We have many people in society who struggle with discrimination and expressing themselves comfortably, especially with the pandemic afoot making it even harder for some individuals to have some stability in their lives, and on top of that many youths and young adults are struggling to find and figure out themselves. I believe Future Nostalgia provides a good way for not only keeping disco alive and also having a form of liberation at hand in the modern era of music, but also providing music for a large community of people to find common ground and accept one another as disco did in the 70s.
