Dua Lipa isn’t exactly known for being a mind-blowing performer. Clips of her early performances have been memeified online ad nauseam, with one in particular, of the singer on stage woodenly rotating her right hip, doing the rounds back in 2018. “Go on girl, give us nothing,” read one viral comment at the time. The meme, which Lipa has since said was hurtful and humiliating, suggested the pop star with heaps of hits didn’t have the performance prowess to match.
How things have changed. Tonight at her Wembley Stadium debut, a more apt comment might be: “Go girl, give us absolutely everything!”. The 29-year-old, who is seven months into her Radical Optimism tour in promotion of her electro-inflected third album, emerges atop an S-shaped bridge, her stage presence irrefutable as she commands the crowd into silence with a single swish of her hair. For the opening track “Training Season”, Lipa’s Abba-inflected wish list of qualities in a romantic partner, the singer wears a diamanté-encrusted leotard as she struts down the catwalk. A gaggle of topless male dancers trails behind reverently like a colony of bees surrounding their queen. Watch that 2018 clip now and marvel at the metamorphosis.
“I feel like I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life,” Lipa tells the 90,000-strong crowd. All the stops have been pulled out tonight: the confetti cannons are working overtime, and Lipa has no less than four outfit changes. Providing even bigger spectacle than any pyrotechnics, though, is her surprise guest, Kay Jay of the Nineties funk-soul icons Jamiroquai, who breezes onstage in a lavender fedora hat and tassel shirt, for a raucous duet of 1996’s hit “Virtual Insanity”.
“He’s a trailblazer for British music,” Lipa says of the band’s frontman. “He’s paved the way, and I feel so lucky to share the stage.” Sonically, it’s a match made in heaven, with Lipa’s deep, raspy vocals right at home on the song’s funky chorus.
The pomp surrounding tonight’s show is a testament to Lipa’s scintillating first decade in music – and her new-ish status as one of the UK’s biggest pop powerhouses. There’s been three Grammy wins, a string of No 1 hits, and, last year, a headline slot at Glastonbury Festival. In May, she was named the youngest person on The Sunday Times’ under-40 rich list, with an estimated wealth of £115m, thanks to her prodigious (and lucrative) touring schedule, her two media companies, an influential book club, and the fact she bought back the rights to her music in 2022.
Yet despite such cultural omnipresence, Lipa’s personality remains a mystery. Interviews are relatively rare and always cordial, sprinkled with vague stories of rubbish ex-boyfriends and not much else. Tonight, we don’t glean anything new from Lipa – her asides can be boiled down to generalised thank-yous and musings on how hard she’s worked to get where she is today. She is the consummate professional, but sometimes that guardedness leaves you wanting more.
Still, Lipa finds other ways to connect. As she rattles through her hits, it’s the nightclub-inspired section of the evening that proves most electrifying. Her 2018 collaboration with Calvin Harris “One Kiss” is beefed up with a drum‘n’ bass-style dance break, followed by a pulsating mash-up of her 2017 breakout hit “New Rules” with DJ duo Bicep’s “Glue”. Tracks from her earlier albums, including 2020 lockdown relic Future Nostalgia, stand out against the Radical Optimism cuts, with “Levitating” and “Physical” propelling the crowd into a perpetual two-step.
Perhaps in recognition of how far she’s come, Lipa performs “Hotter Than Hell” for the first time in six years. The smoky belter is what got her signed to Warner Bros back in 2014. By the end of the night, she is quite literally doing a victory lap of Wembley Stadium, weaving through fenced walkways to high-five the crowd, hug them, and fulfil selfie requests. At one moment, Lipa gets lost in the teary eyes of a group of fans from Spain. She snaps back. “I’ve got a show to put on. Grazie!” she says, scurrying back to the stage. We may not know her fully, but we’re fortunate to have her.
