Song of the Week - Dua Lipa - Training Season

Here we are again with another Song of the Week and once again it featured on the Breaking More Waves New Music Weekly Playlist last week (here).

Of course Dua Lipa needs no introduction. She’s already a huge popstar. Well, she’s five foot eight inches which technically isn’t that huge, but is still a lot bigger than Kylie Minogue. 

And no doubt, unless you have been hiding under a rock, you have already heard this one. 

Therefore, you already know that Training Season is: 1. A bop 2. Hooky as hell (rather than hotter than hell which is so 2016.) It’s one of those songs that your postman will be whistling and football fans will take the chorus and make new words up to it whilst bouncing up and down on the stands. My only disappointment? I really wanted all the lads in the video to suddenly break out into a very camp Riverdance style flashmob choreographed routine halfway through the tune, but alas it never happened. Maybe there will be an ‘alternate version’ video for that.

The bottom line is, Training Season = A good pop song. A definite top 2 single in the UK surely? (I would say number 1, but there's the Texas Hold 'Em factor to consider.)

Dua Lipa - Training Season

New Music: Dua Lipa - Last Dance

If you like pop music and unless you’ve been hiding in a dark cave for the last few months you cannot have failed to have noticed Dua Lipa. She’s one of those artists who has been carefully seeded by her label / PR people with all of the tastemaker types and as a result found herself on the BBC Sound of 2016 longlist. I’ve not featured her on the blog before, because whilst her releases so far have been good enough (particularly online hit Be The One) they haven’t to my mind stood out way above the multitude of commercial sounding pop music that comes my way. However, that’s not to say I’m not intrigued by Dua Lipa, if only for the fact that she’s originally from Kosovo and her name actually is Dua Lipa and means ‘love’ in Albanian. 

So having got to step one on the ladder of pop the question was (and still is) can she climb higher? I decided the only way to make some sort of informed decision on this was to go and see her live. So off I trekked to The Hope & Ruin in Brighton, where a dark room above the pub, probably more suited to sweaty, unwashed indie bands in skinny jeans and leather jackets, provided the location for one of her shows. Let’s not forget though, that I once saw some lass called Adele play in the same room (when it was half the size it is now, following a revamp) for £5 and she did OK didn’t she?

What I learnt at that gig was several simple things. First, that Dua Lipa can do it live. She can sing, she can move and she’s got enough confidence to know that she doesn’t have to over try. Girls love her and so do the boys. The second thing I discovered was that she’s got a bundle of songs waiting to go that are better than Be The One. If she gets the radio play with them (and given her BBC Sound of vote, there’s an increased chance of that) they could actually be bona fide hits. 

First out of the blocks of those potential hits is Last Dance, which finds Dua Lipa singing of grabbing the moment: “We could burn and crash, we could take a chance, holding nothing back, like it’s our last dance” she sings as the world explodes in a firework of pop glory. This one will make you oo and ah in exhileration. Embrace it.

Dua Lipa - Last Dance