Listen. Twenty-two degrees in the UK is pushing it for me. Hit 25, and I’m kinda unbearable to be around. And 30? Don’t touch me, don’t look at me — don’t even think about me. I’m busy trying not to spontaneously combust. (I’m extremely weak and pathetic, by the way — dripping as I type this, actually.) So the fact that Dua Lipa performed an hour-and-a-half show in 30-degree heat, dancing, belting, not a bead of sweat in sight, was nothing short of Olympic-level pop stamina.
Across the weekend, Dua played to over 150,000 fans at London’s Wembley Stadium as part of her 75-date Radical Optimism World Tour. Back in 2022, I reviewed her Future Nostalgia show and described it as “a greatest hits collection”, which was kinda remarkable, considering she only had two albums at the time. (The two most-streamed albums by a female artist on Spotify, no less.) That same sentiment applies here, but amplified. The sheer number of hits that she performed is when we start throwing around words like “icon” and “legend”.
She kicked off her Saturday show with her 2023 anthem ‘Training Season’, before segueing into the (should’ve-been-a-single) ‘End of an Era’, top ten smasher ‘Break My Heart’ and global chart-topper ‘One Kiss’. With pristine vocals, relentless choreography and her trademark radical-optimism energy, this first act somehow made you forget that a nearby stranger’s sweat had just catapulted into your drink.
