54 Time May 11, 2020
hit “New Rules,” and its
viral video, helped make her
a global star—has become
one of the most prominent
cultural faces of our socially
distant existence. And in
late-night performances,
Lipa has ushered in a new
wave of audiovisual creativ-
ity forged under unprece-
dented constraints. Musical
performances from isola-
tion have had a sameness:
dimly lit iPhone camerawork, acoustic guitar pick-
ing, glitchy vocal acrobatics. Lipa and her team were
disillusioned with the format. “I didn’t want us to
feel like we had to put on a simple performance just
because we’re working from home,” she says.So for her performance of “Don’t Start Now”
on The Late Late Show With James Corden, Lipa
and her team simulated a Zoom call, with Lipa
singing and making faces as her dancers and band
grooved and twirled in thumbnails around her. Her
performance of “Break My Heart” on The Tonight
Show Starring Jimmy Fallon went even further:
12 green screens were sent to the homes of perform-
ers, their movements stitched together so the danc-
ers’ fuzzy silhouettes flitted in and out like ghosts,
while a seated Lipa raced through a whirlwind
of now foreign settings, including crowded city
streets, subway cars and Fallon’s stage. “It’s always
more interesting to get out of my comfort zone—to
make it as crazy as possible,” Lipa says. “If it doesn’t
turn out, fine—but at least we tried.”
Since then, performance videos have started to
break away from the previous drab norms, while
other pop stars, from Kelly Clarkson to Charli XCX,
have started to re-emerge with new music. Mean-
while, Lipa is still racing forward. She’s working on
a crowdsourced performance of “Break My Heart,”
and hopes to create an animated music video and
send out personal zines to fans. Her second album
rollout couldn’t have been further from what she
had planned—but the circumstances have
pushed her to think diferently about the re-
sponsibilities of being an artist. “There’s
so much we can come up with,” she says.
“Maybe it’s our duty to make things a little
easier for people at home.” □in mid-march, The pop-music world wenT
into collective retreat. Tentpole festivals were post-
poned; stadium tours were scrapped. Major artists,
such as Lady Gaga and Sam Smith, shelved their al-
bums rather than run the risk of appearing insensi-
tive in an era of isolation and illness.
But one artist did the opposite, choosing to
rush out an album before its scheduled release:
the 24-year-old British pop singer- songwriter Dua
Lipa. “I was thinking of moving the album— putting
it out at a later time when things weren’t feeling so
heavy,” she says. “But when I was playing devil’s
advocate with myself, I kept going back to the fact
that I made this record to get away from any anxiet-
ies and pressures of making a second record—to just
have fun and dance.”
The gambit paid of. The relentlessly upbeat
Future Nostalgia has been rapturously received
by fans and critics, hitting No. 1 in nine countries.
Listeners have gravitated in particular to two
songs that, while written and recorded before
the pandemic, seem to be eerily apt blueprints
for social distancing: in “Don’t Start Now,” Lipa
commands an ex-flame to stay in rather than chase
after her, and in “Break My Heart,” she laments, “I
should have stayed at home/ ’Cause I was doing
better alone.” The two sets of lyrics were
soon inserted into memes and PSAs. Critics
dubbed Lipa the Queen of Quarantine.
In the weeks since, Lipa—whose 2017
FEATURE
Making the most
of lockdown
By Andrew R. Chow
TimeOff Music
◁
Lipa, bottom center,
performs with her band on
The Late Late Show With
James CordenLipa’s
unintentionally
quarantine- friendly
lyrics have inspired
memes and PSAs
▽