Hollywood wasn’t the only city where anticipatory emotions ran high over the weekend.
Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” tour finally arrived at San Jose’s SAP Center on Sunday, March 27 — after a two-year pandemic delay — the same date as the 2020 release day of the British Albanian pop superstar’s second album “Future Nostalgia.” The significance of the date wasn’t lost on the singer or the fans, who came dressed to thrill on a rainy Oscars Sunday night.
“It feels absolutely surreal that I’m up onstage doing this,” she said, during a break in her nearly 90-minute set. “This has been my dream. … We’ve been waiting two years to put this show on for you.”
The feeling of anticipation was mutual. The San Jose crowd braved the rain, Oscar spoilers and gas prices to party like it’s 2019, with SAP Center packed to the upper decks with folks wanting to celebrate an album and artist that brought comfort and vibrant disco-fueled escapism during an extended period of uncertainty, anxiety and loss. “Future Nostalgia” was a commercial and critical success, earning two Billboard Top 5 singles (“Levitating Remix” featuring DaBaby and “Don’t Start Now”) and a 2021 Grammy for best pop vocal album.
Local vibe creatorDJ Umami, who also serves as a rotating DJ for the San Francisco Giants and Golden State Warriors, filled in for show openerCaroline Polachek, formerly of Chairlift, who canceled last-minute due to abad fall from her tour bus. Lolo Zouaï, a French American singer who is aLowell High School graduate, played a set of dreamy electro pop.
But by 9:20 p.m., Lipa attacked the SAP stage with renewed force. Her 18-song set opened with the retro synth pop workout “Physical” complete with a ballet barre. Her statuesque presence was embellished by 10 dancers and a four-piece band. The retro flair would be a recurring “Future Nostalgia” motif from the fluorescent green bodysuits to disco balls and vector graphics.
Like many of us, Lipa used the COVID-19 lockdown as an opportunity for self-improvement, focusing on her dancing abilities after viral incidents at a 2018 awards show and an innocuouship swivelcalled her moves into question. Her “New Rules” lyric, “Practice makes perfect/ I’m still trying to learn it by heart/ Eat, sleep, and breathe it/ Rehearse and repeat it” carried extra meaning on this night.
The choreography was flashy and echoed multiple eras — modern, retro, even Hollywood musicals (“New Rules”) — and like Ginger Rogers, she hit her marks in elevated footwear without missing a lyrical beat. Whenever she used a mike stand (“Cool,” “Pretty Please”), it was a cue to pay attention. Her triumphant vocal was especially felt during “Boys Will Be Boys,” which she dedicated to all the mums celebrating Mother’s Day in the U.K.
对于一个艺术家只有两张专辑,some notable omissions from the set list: “Hotter Than Hell” and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” were absent. Most crushing, the breakup anthem “IDGAF” was reduced to a muffled interlude that involved two roller-skating cocktail servers and an animated clip of Lipa escaping a maniacal lobster. Rolling the crustacean skit back into its deep-sea trunk and subbing a medley of those three songs would be a crowd-pleasing alternative.
The show overall moved with the precision and pace of a theater production from one big number to the next, leaving little wiggle room for spontaneous off-the-cuff interaction. If she ever went for a mike-drop moment, someone would be there to catch it before it hit the floor (like when she tossed an umbrella into the crowd during “New Rules,” which went right to a roadie’s hands). Moments like “Hallucinate” allowed her to vibe along with the crowd, ditto the virtual Elton John “Cold Heart” duet, where she sat with her dancers at the end of the main stage and joyfully sang along while the ensemble held up a rainbow flag.
The energy levels spiked during the clubby section of the show, with her collaborations with Silk City (“Electricity”) and Calvin Harris (“One Kiss”) raising the tempo and the temperature. “Hallucinate” followed, adding a snippet of Daft Punk’s “Technologic” at the end. The main set closer, “Levitating,” even had her in a basket raised conservatively above the stage — because, y’know, metaphor. (It was performed minus DaBaby’s remix verse, aftershe took to Instagramlast year to condemn the rapper’s homophobic comments made at a 2021 Rolling Loud festival.)
During the encore, a disco version of “Don’t Start Now,” Lipa performed a bit of her infamous hip shake, humorously and effectively reclaiming what was once an embarrassing viral internet moment. Her dancers followed suit and led a procession to the middle of the arena, where they closed the show on a euphoric note with athletic choreography and confetti explosions. Her metamorphosis from pop singer to all-around entertainer was complete, “a full 180,” as the song goes.