British-Albanian singer-songwriter and pop hero Dua Lipa steers into Orlando for the second night of her much-anticipated "Future Nostalgia Tour" this week.
Future Nostalgia, Dua Lipa's 2020 sophomore album, combines her deep, soulful vocals with a contagious and vibrant production — add in her wondrously powerful pop lyrics and you've got yourself a perpetual dancefloor-filler. Hits like "Levitating" and "Don't Stop Now" are destined to live forever in pop-song paradise.
The Future Nostalgia tour has zero "nostalgia" for the setlist or production the way it was originally envisioned back in 2020, before the pandemic sidelined touring. On a tour radically reconfigured by the artist, Dua Lipa promises only the "very best of" her best material will get a live airing — and get the crowd moving. And speaking of "the best of," we have to also spotlight Dua Lipa's new "global style, culture and society" newsletter venture, Service95, launched last week.
Like all pop mavericks, Dua Lipa is omnivorous in her aesthetic tastes and is eager to share the discoveries she's made while traveling.
"I find huge joy in telling people what I've learned about in any given city and love finding connection in our shared experiences," she says. "Service95 is going to take that idea and bring it to anyone who's as curious as I am about life." (We wish our new colleague in the pop-culture writing business the best of luck.)
Songwriter, producer and vocal goddess Caroline Polachek, a support act on the Future Nostalgia tour, offers fans a variety of genres through which to experience her own dazzling evolution. After the commercial success of her previous band, Chairlift, Polachek earned songwriting credits for Beyoncé's "No Angel." In her Ramona Lisa guise, Polachek's eerie and playful vocal echoes buoyed each track of the Arcadia album, and her ambient alter ego CEP explores heavy and damp electronic vistas.
Polachek's 2019 electro-pop solo debut, Pang, delivered a masterpiece of avant-pop, a heady sermon on love, longing, self-discovery and connection. The album exists like a dream ignited inside a flotation tank: Polachek's soul-stirring lyrics accompanied by airy instrumentals offer solace and freedom in the self-reflection that often follows isolation and loss, themes that are more and more familiar to many of us. With Pang, Polachek birthed the perfect bedroom-to-dancefloor pop album. Cry on your bed alone about your favorite distanced lover while appropriately absorbing "Ocean of Tears," or sit up and attempt to dust off your discontent with a friend by pirouetting into your heartbreak during "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings." Polachek effortlessly balances the tightrope between poignant and playful.
Orlando concert-goers are lucky — especially with big tours being canceled left and right — to share a precious few moments of essential catharsis and communal escape with these two pop forces.
