Close your eyes and think of Camden, the rowdy, gaudy north London neighbourhood known for its old-school boozers, perpetual congregation of punks and surplus of tourist-trap tat. Now, which musical artists can you hear amid the hubbub? Cheeky-chappy two-toners Madness, whose Dublin Castle residency made them synonymous with the area? Grotbag indie revivalists the Libertines, who staged notoriously raucous early gigs in their Camden basement flat? How about robotically slick, fiercely business-minded dance-pop doyenne Dua Lipa?
Presumably not the latter – but with her first foray into TV, Lipa is hoping to remedy that. Camden, a four-part documentary series about the area’s outsized musical influence, is co-produced by the pop star and enlists some big names (Noel Gallagher, Chuck D, Boy George) to reminisce about their Camden connections while folding Lipa’s own origin-story into the mix. It was while living there as a teenager that she began recording the YouTube covers that eventually got her noticed by the industry, a fact she relays with the slightly unsettling cheesy smile that accompanies all her contributions to this series. Admittedly, she wasn’t exactly enmeshed in the local scene, but she did draw inspiration from the “non-conforming energy” of the place, observing that “there is something in the air in Camden that gives you courage to give it a go”.
