A few days before her triumphant homecoming gig at London’s O2 Arena – delayed for two years by Covid – Dua Lipa spoke about being trolled for her dancing. Clips from early performances always seemed to go viral, with Lipa at the mercy of listless choreography that called for lengthy sections of repetitive limb shimmying. “I love her lack of energy,” read an infamous YouTube comment in 2018. “Go girl, give us nothing.”
Lipa said that the criticism left her doubting herself and whether she was good enough to be a pop star. At the O2, Lipa leaves her critics in the dust. Strutting on stage as if she has something to prove, she is slung over dancers’ shoulders and shoved under legs, her husky vocals pristine, her setlist immaculate. As a result, that early lethargy looks more and more like a short-lived effect rather than a lack of charisma – detached, streamlined cool that rejected the maximalist spectacle of the pop queens who reigned at the time, from Reputation-era Taylor Swift to Ariana Grande circa Dangerous Woman.
