Dua Lipa Announces Highly Anticipated New Album 'Radical Optimism'

Pop superstar Dua Lipa has announced that her highly anticipated third album, Radical Optimism, will be released on Friday, 3 May.

The album announcement – made on Instagram – was preceded by two excellent singles, Houdini and Training Season, with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker as a key producer on both tracks.

In addition to Parker, Lipa has linked up with longtime collaborator Caroline Ailin, Danny L Harle (known for working with Caroline Polachek and Charli XCX), and Tobias Jesso Jr. (Adele, Niall Horan).

Explaining the inspiration behind Radical Optimism in a press release, Lipa said that a friend introduced her to the term, and the concept resonated with her. She continued, “I became more curious as I started to play with it and weave it into my life. It struck me — the idea of going through chaos gracefully and feeling like you can weather any storm.”

Unlike her previous album, March 2020’s Future Nostalgia, which mined a disco-pop influence, Radical Optimism finds Lipa inputting sounds and feelings of 1970s-era psychedelia and ‘90s trip-hop acts like Massive Attack, as well as Britpop and bands like Primal Scream.

She added, “At the same time, I found myself looking through the music history of psychedelia, trip-hop, and Britpop. It has always felt so confidently optimistic to me, and that honesty and attitude is a feeling I took into my recording sessions.”

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Radical Optimism is available to pre-order and pre-save now, with Warner Music Australia selling the album on curacao-coloured vinyl and CD. Pre-order/pre-save your copy here.

In November, Lipa told triple j that Tame Impala’s Currents has been the soundtrack to her life.

“It’s one of my favourite albums ever ever ever,” she said. “[It] was kind of like the gateway drug for me into Tame Impala. It completely changed my life, and so it was very, very cool to be able to collaborate with him [Kevin Parker] this way.”

Elaborating on how she’s always “admired” Kevin Parker as an artist, Lipa continued, “I’ve always looked up to [him] as someone that I’m really inspired by, and [he] has always been on my dream board of people to work with.”

She then talked about the pair’s natural musical chemistry, noting their surprise at “how well we just gelled in the studio and how well it worked and how fun it was to collaborate with each other. We’ve made some really fun songs.”