Dua Lipa Glastonbury Review – Rarely Are Headlines Loaded With Hook And Fun | Glastonbury 2024

aAccording to the most interesting part of her in-between-song conversation, Dua Lipa’s Glastonbury appearance was the result of a childhood act. The singer claims she wrote down her desire to top the bill at the Pyramid Stage in detail, including the night the event would take place: Friday, so she could “spend the rest of the weekend partying.” And now here we are: a slightly bizarre video of Dua Lipa signing her name and writing “GLASTO 24” on a pane of glass, then licking it.

Whether you buy the encore stuff or not, it’s clear that Dua Lipa has spent a lot of time studying and digesting how a successful Glastonbury headlining set works, and putting what she’s gleaned to good use. The announcement of her appearance led to a degree of consternation, especially after her latest album, Radical Optimism, failed to replicate the kind of global success achieved by its predecessor, the lockdown-shattering Future Nostalgia. But she already has a repertoire of inevitable hits, from New Rules to her Elton John collaboration Cold Heart, which is half the battle won. What’s more, she puts everything she has into her set to give it the feel of an event, rather than it being just another pop show transported to a field in Somerset, or another stop on a world tour that happens to be on a farm. .

There are fireworks galore. And there are fireworks – so many during Levitating that you wonder what she might eventually do, though she manages to outdo them. There’s a crowd-pleasing nod to the fun the festival offers, albeit not from the singer herself, who largely confines herself to asking the audience how they’re feeling: instead, she takes to the stage to a famous Peter Fonda riff from the 1966 film The Wild Angels telling the crowd he wants to drink and have a good time. And there’s an equally entertaining guest appearance by Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker – his jeans and T-shirt contrasting with the constant costume changes of the main attraction; a moment where the duo puff out their vocals and laugh in a way that belies the tight feel of the show – performing not one of his collaborations with Dua Lipa but his biggest hit, The Less I Know the Better: 1.6 billion streams and counting.

Hallucinate makes some of Lipa’s recent work look a little pale by comparison. Filled with house music and sultry beats, it’s probably one of the best pop songs in recent memory—something no one is claiming on behalf of Houdini or Training Season. There are two less impressive songs from Radical Optimism added to the mix: the sultry “Happy for You” and the acoustic guitar-driven “These Walls.”

The latter was the only song on said album that vaguely referenced the influence of the Britpop she spent so much time talking about before its release, but upon listening to it tonight, it sounds more like other million-selling songs of the ’90s. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Texas, Natalie Imbruglia, or even Coors sang it. But the group hides these songs among the hits so successfully that you barely notice them. There’s always another hit song on the way: Levitating, Physical, Illusion.

“It’s a lot, isn’t it?” she said, contemplating how large the huge crowd was, which remained steady throughout: there was no waste to suggest that one of Glastonbury’s most important artists had made a mistake and pushed his audience towards the festival’s other diverse delights. It is an unambiguous success.