On March 13, Dua Lipa formally announced both the title of her forthcoming new album (Radical Optimism) and its scheduled arrival date (May 3). But now that she's given the world at large an opportunity to bask in that knowledge and start to get a bit excited about it, she's decided to start teasing the LP in earnest, starting with a couple of social media posts which offer brief snippets of the music to come as well as a bit of narration from the singer herself about the process of putting the record together.
Lipa explored her new album's creation in a series of social media posts.
The first post, ostensibly entitled "Album Moments," is relatively short and features a flurry of footage accompanied by a few snippets of music. "I hear you," she writes, adding only that she's "feeling optimistic about this week."
The second post, however, is the one that features the aforementioned narration, and it provides a bit more insight into Dua Lipa's process in recording and compiling the material.
“It’s the beauty of the chaos and trying to stay calm through it,” she begins. “Listening over and over and feeling like, ‘How do I want to tell the story?’ I always go for the most upbeat ones to introduce people to the record. I can just keep on dancing and keep people dancing. And I rewrote so many of those parts, but also working with Kevin, Danny, Tobias, and Caroline over such a long period of time made it feel like a band. And staying optimistic is important. Anything can happen. Quick, make a new video! Quick, rerecord this part! Trying to create a world in a different way and sonically it was about experimenting, and then thematically it was always about resilience.”
If that quartet of first names doesn't mean anything to you, we can offer some insight: the "Kevin" in question is Kevin Parker of Tame Impala; "Danny" is Danny L. Harle, former PC Music producer; "Tobias" is songwriter Tobias Jesso, Jr., who's penned tunes for everyone from Adele ("When We Were Young") to Florence and the Machine ("Hunger") to Niall Horan ("Heaven"); and "Caroline" is Caroline Ailin, who's been working with Dua Lipa since 2020's Future Nostalgia.
Given that we're still more than a month out from the release of Radical Optimism, it's a fair bet that we haven't seen the last of the advance publicity for the LP, especially when you consider that - for all practical purposes - the advance publicity started with the release of the "Houdini" single and then continued with the release of "Training Season." Additionally, lest we forget, Dua Lipa also technically made two appearances on Late Night with Seth Meyers, both of which were positively delightful: the first found her participating in Meyers' recurring segment "Day Drinking with Seth Meyers," while the second found her coming on the show as a guest after the airing of the "Day Drinking" segment and finishing the bits that they were supposed to do during the first segment but had to postpone because she passed out in the bathroom before they could do it.
Yes, this is true. Just watch below. And if you don't walk away completely charmed by this woman, you may wish to seek professional help. (Okay, not really. But for real, she is pretty swell...)
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