Recently, some of the world's biggest pop stars have been eschewing bangers in favor of a more postmodern, self-referential approach to the form. I don't necessarily mind the idea of personal mythology being central to unpacking an album's themes (it keeps me employed, after all), but the immediacy and the broad appeal of pop music have always felt crucial to its pleasure. The twenty-eight-year-old singer Dua Lipa, who was born in London to Kosovo Albanian parents, appears to instinctively understand the utility of pop as escapist fantasy. Lipa's new album, "Radical Optimism," does not require its listeners to know anything about Lipa, or Recently, some of the her constellation of associates, or her cultural history, or her relationship to the past; it doesn't require knowing anything about anything, really, except how cleansing and ecstatic it can feel to move your body with brainless abandon.
Lipa is not alone on this journey-Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae, and Troye Sivan are all working in similar modes but she might be our most reliable performer of astute, frictionless pop. (Lipa, of course, owes a debt to her predecessors, including Kylie Minogue, Madonna, and Britney Spears.) She seems fully committed to pop as a genre with boundaries (short songs, big hooks, broadly adaptable lyrics). That could be why she was tasked with opening the Grammys telecast this year, performing a medley of tracks from "Radical Optimism." This is not hard music to enjoy the first time you hear it.
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