Great Eras: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Future Nostalgia (Part 1)
A Retrospective
It’s been three years since the release of Future Nostalgia, the album that put Dua Lipa on top of the pop world. Future Nostalgia was the soundtrack of quarantine for many, and it was widely considered one of the best albums of the new decade.
Despite Future Nostalgia’s staying power, it didn’t do opening numbers like you might expect. In fact, the album netted zero number ones (yes, even the 2021 year-end chart topper “Levitating”). And the album itself didn’t do great numbers either — it peaked at #3 in the US and didn’t even debut at #1 in the UK.
These numbers didn’t matter in the end, as Future Nostalgia is now the sixth-most streamed album of all time, and Dua Lipa has enough name recognition to headline the soundtrack of the most anticipated movie in the world. But it demonstrates that the success of Future Nostalgia was far from a foregone conclusion.
So how was Future Nostalgia able to catch on in the beginning? Why did it falter? And how did it ultimately succeed? This essay will explore the arc of Future Nostalgia from both a poptimist and stan culture perspective.
Possibilities
In 2019, Dua Lipa was a medium-famous pop star primarily known for her success in European markets. Her 2017 debut album Dua Lipa was a sleeper hit, generating eight singles that made the rounds on radio over a three-year span. She also had moderate success in the US, with “New Rules” reaching a peak of #6 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The following year, she released a pair of electronic collaborations: “Electricity” with Diplo & Mark Ronson and “One Kiss” with Calvin Harris. These songs did even better than her previous work, with “One Kiss” topping the UK charts for eight consecutive weeks, becoming the biggest British song of 2018.
But here’s the thing: very few pop stars attain what is called “Main Pop Girl” status: a nebulous term that refers to artists who have really made it. Think of all the singers who seemed huge at the time but now seem like flashes in the pan: Tove Lo, Iggy Azalea, Tori Kelly. Many artists have flirted with fame, but it takes sustained success to be known in the popular consciousness as an artist who reliably puts out hits.
Lipa had more hits than most of her peers, but it was still hard for her to stand out in a crowded pop landscape, which contained a surprising number of fellow pop singers from the Albanian diaspora.1 Bebe Rexha already had three top ten hits to her name, including long-running radio staple “Meant To Be”, and up-and-comer Ava Max had just climbed the charts with her euphoric track “Sweet But Psycho” earlier that year. How was Lipa going to stand out from her superficially similar competitors?
Lipa’s problem was that she lacked a distinctive artist brand. The general public just didn’t yet associate the name “Dua Lipa” with a persona worthy of a Main Pop Girl. The potential was there: her deep, husky voice turned heads, and her debut album showed glimpses of the “female alpha” aesthetic that she would ultimately lean into. But this was still early 2019, and her career just wasn’t quite there yet.
In fact, the most distinctive part of Lipa’s image in 2019 stan culture circles was her unflattering performance in this infamous concert video. While it didn’t necessarily hurt her position, she would have to shed this image to be taken seriously as an artist!
So Lipa wasn’t in a bad position, but she wasn’t in a commanding one either. She was the type of artist that you might expect to have a “sophomore slump”, going the way of Meghan Trainor or Alessia Cara. Stardom was certainly achievable for Dua Lipa, but she still needed a smash US hit to become a household name.
A Timeless Song
But Lipa did get her smash US hit, and that smash US hit was “Don’t Start Now”. The song debuted at #30 on the Billboard Hot 100 to glowing reviews from the press. The song took a while to catch on with the general public, but on r/popheads, the reaction was immediate. “Damn she BROUGHT IT,” remarks one user. “oh SHIT this is pretty good” said another. User prise_fighter quipped “if this isn't played in every gay bar in the country then what was Stonewall even for?”.
When the song came out, I listened to it probably 16 times in a row. There’s something irresistible about the grooving bass line, which overpowers the main melody at times. And just listen to that cowbell!
The time was right for a song like “Don’t Start Now”. Up until its release, the pop music landscape had been characterized by downtempo, moody projects like Ariana Grande’s thank u, next and Billie Eilish’s WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?. The effervescent, buoyant mood of the song scratched an itch that the general public may have forgotten they had.
What I love about “Don’t Start Now” is that you can’t tell what the chorus is. The song is just catchy as hell from front to back. Is the “Did a full 180 / Crazy” part the chorus? What about “If you don’t wanna see me / dancing with somebody”? (Neither part is the chorus.) Every time “Don’t Start Now” comes into my head, I find myself drawn to a different section. The music site Genius even has a hard time labeling the different parts of the song on its lyrics page. For example, is the “Up, up / Don’t come out, out” part really the bridge? It shows up again after the chorus at the end of the song. Does that make it the post-chorus? It’s hard to say.
Even if Future Nostalgia never came out, “Don’t Start Now” still would have had a big impact. The song stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 forever, becoming the 7th-longest charting song of all time. It netted three Grammy nominations and played a huge role in shaping the disco sound that was to dominate the airwaves for the next two years. Without “Don’t Start Now” to prime the ears of the public, perhaps we never would have seen the success of “Say So” or even the historic run of “Blinding Lights”.
Following the success of “Don’t Start Now”, Dua Lipa released the title track “Future Nostalgia” as a promotional single. The song is often forgotten in the context of the album, but at the time of release it served as a manifesto for what was to come. The lyrics of the song are unusually meta — it references architectural pioneer John Lautner and contains a nod to producer Jeff Bhasker. At the start of the track, Lipa boldly declares “You want a timeless song / I want to change the game”, implying that she knows exactly what she’s doing with her sound. She also uses this show of force to introduce her now-signature “female alpha” archetype. The takeaway? “Don’t Start Now” was just the beginning. 2020 was going to be the year of Dua Lipa.
I believed it.
Follow the Noise
When it came time to push a second single to radio, Lipa’s team adopted an unusual strategy. They decided to release her new song “Physical” outside the US only. The team would wait until a later date to push out “Break My Heart” to US radio.
I was dismayed when this happened, as “Physical” is perhaps my favorite pop song of all time.2 The song starts out by sampling a Persian flute of all things, which does a lot of work setting the vibe. Then that relentless bass line kicks in, and the intensity slowly builds to a cathartic climax.3 The track’s explosiveness stuck with me, and I was convinced that “Physical” was meant to be Lipa’s next hit. But there were several reasons not to push “Physical” to US radio, and I now concede that this was just good pop marketing.
First of all, American charts move much more slowly than European ones. Just look at today’s charts: of the top 5, 3 of the songs have been on the chart for more than 20 weeks. That’s nearly half the year! In contrast, the UK top 5 has not a single song with more than 10 weeks on the chart, and there are only 10 songs with more than 20 weeks on the chart in the entire top 50. If you’re a new artist trying to score a chart hit, you want to bide your time. “Don’t Start Now” was still climbing the charts in America even though Europe had moved on. Rather than “cannibalize” the success of her existing song, Lipa decided to let “Don’t Start Now” cook a little bit longer.
Also, “Physical” is much more of a traditional dance track, and the American market just isn’t as receptive to the genre. While the aforementioned dance track “One Kiss” was the biggest song of the summer across Europe, it didn’t even crack the American top 25. “Physical” was just far less likely to be an American hit than the European one.
But most importantly, “Physical” wasn’t quite right for the modern moment. Future Nostalgia came out just as TikTok and similar apps were beginning to shape the music industry. In the past, long chart toppers weren’t rare — the radio version of “Hotel California” clocked in at just over six minutes. But then came the Great Shortening: a trend in which the top charting songs in America gradually became shorter in length.
This trend is perhaps best exemplified by 2019 rap-country crossover “Old Town Road”. Much has been written about how Lil Nas X’s marketing abilities launched this song into the stratosphere. But let’s talk about the song structure itself. The chorus happens just twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. But the second chorus ends mid-line, almost as if it’s begging for another stream. And how long is that first chorus? 30 seconds, just enough to register a hit on streaming platforms. The song was engineered to succeed in the social media age. Songs were getting shorter even before TikTok, but “Old Town Road” ushered in the era of the 15-second clip — where having some quick, snappy segment is essential to commercial success.
This is where “Break My Heart” really shines. While its similarity to INXS’s “Need You Tonight” sounds a bit derivative, “Break My Heart” has the bells and whistles to make up for it. There’s that tantalizing pre-chorus where the backing instrumental drops out almost completely. There’s that satisfying, crunchy transition back into the verses. And of course there’s that dramatic horn blast that seems to scream “You thought the chorus was over? Gotcha!”.
“Physical” is an incredible track, but it lacks the snappy, hooky moments of “Break My Heart”. There isn’t any one part of the song that you would use in a TikTok trend4, for instance. The slower payoff of the song won’t hit without a listening experience that goes beyond the 15-second clip. This is not to say that “Physical” was never going to catch on: after all, the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” achieved historic chart success that year with a similar structure.5 But stars only have so many chances to break out, and Lipa’s team did not want to risk jeopardizing this shot at stardom.
So “Don’t Start Now” was allowed to simmer, and “Break My Heart” was to be sent to US radio at the end of March 2020. As the winter continued, Lipa’s star continued to rise. Her team was full of great ideas, like this incredible “Let’s Get Physical” workout video released just before the “Break My Heart” push. But her main advantage was the amazing music production that set her apart from the rest of the pop landscape.
In mid-March, everything was going according to plan…
The End of It All
…but of course it was 2020, and we all know what happened to things that were going according to plan in March 2020.
On March 15, the CDC announced their recommendations for large gatherings, and quarantine as we know it began. The world came to a screeching halt. How was Future Nostalgia going to catch the dance floors by storm if they were all shut down?
To make matters worse, a high-profile leak of the entire album occurred nearly two weeks before its scheduled release date in April. Leaks in the pop music industry are not uncommon (especially from certain artists), but they usually contain unfinished songs or happen close to release when the song is already in stores. A leak like this was not supposed to happen.
Leaks are complex, and a full discussion of how leaks impact the music industry is beyond the scope of this article. But the primary negative effect of leaks is that they soften streaming numbers from an artist’s most dedicated fans. This happens because many of those fans have already been listening to the album, so they may not stream it as heavily during opening week as they would otherwise. Established artists are more insulated from this effect, since less of their initial commercial performance hinges on a core group of dedicated supporters. But for up-and-comers like 2020 Dua Lipa, leaks can be really damaging.
Dua Lipa herself went on Instagram Live in tears over this. You have to feel for her during this stream. There was a good chance that the trajectory of her album was ruined for reasons completely outside of her control. Lipa even questions on stream whether it would be a good idea to release a jubilant dance record like Future Nostalgia at all, given the circumstances. At the very least, she had to know that a traditional album promo campaign was now out of the question. But in the end, she decided it would be best to just put her art out into the world.
The team acted fast, pushing the release date up to that Friday to stop the bleeding. The album debuted at a disappointing #4 in the US, especially considering that it had a shot of going #1 on the less competitive original release date. It didn’t even top the UK charts in its opening week, losing out to 5 Seconds of Summer’s CALM.6 And “Don’t Start Now” tragically missed the #1 spot in the final week of March, blocked by monster hit “The Box” by Roddy Ricch.
With the world on pause, the project faced more questions than answers. All Lipa and her team could do was hope that the music would speak for itself.
Continue to Part 2
There are several competing theories on why singers of Albanian descent are so popular, but the most mainstream one is that Albanians’ racially ambiguous look is uniquely suited for the modern beauty standard in the Western world.
There’s an awesome NYT video about the making of “Physical” that you should definitely check out!
Because of the progression of the song, the director of the music video decided to make it represent an orgasm.
Lipa’s team actually did try to make a TikTok trend out of “Physical”, but it predictably didn’t really catch on.
The release cycle of “Blinding Lights” was super interesting. The team decided to push “Heartless” to #1 upon release and allow its B-side “Blinding Lights” to simmer on the backburner. But while “Heartless” largely left the public consciousness, “Blinding Lights” had enough staying power to score a #1 on its own (albeit on a much slower schedule).
5 Seconds of Summer actually faced some drama of their own: a shipping error caused 10,000 of the units to be sent out the week before, blocking them from the #1 spot on the Billboard 200.