Dua Lipa and a 53-piece orchestra, a 14-person choir, a seven-person band, two truly magnificent dresses, and one Elton John took over Royal Albert Hall on October 17 for a truly memorable, one-night-only concert.
Known for her dance-heavy performances, the show offered fans a more scaled-back version of Dua (if you can call a 53-piece orchestra scaled back) that, at its best, felt more like an evening in an intimate jazz club than a major pop star’s concert at a 5,000+ seat venue.
The singer first emerged in a red satin dress that was truly jaw-dropping set against her newly jet-black hair (she asked later in the concert if the crowd could make ‘some commotion’ for her new do).
She opened with End of an Era from her latest album Radical Optimism (a serviceable pop outing that was met with a lackluster reception when it dropped in 2024), and it quickly became clear that she was performing for a camera as much as she was to the crowd.
The entirety of the set was filmed by a choreographed group of cameras who expertly circled the pop star as she sang. While this was rarely distracting, it did mean that Dua spent more time stationary than she usually does.
Not necessarily known for her stage presence – she did spawn the meme ‘Go girl, give us nothing’ thanks to her low energy performance of New Rules at the BRIT Awards in 2018 – she didn’t always seem comfortable with her feet planted and nothing to hide behind but a microphone.
When she finally began to strut the S-shaped catwalk that wove through the orchestra on Houdini and Levitating, the crowd and the pop star came alive.
No one can accuse Dua Lipa of being worn by a dress and she made that red satin number look at once elegant and impossibly sexy. When she finally began to move, Giselle Bundchen’s iconic Olympic opening ceremony walk could barely hold up against the confidence with which the pop star moved around the stage – and Giselle didn’t have to sing simultaneously.
And to Dua’s credit, she sang. The famously extraordinary acoustics of the Royal Albert Hall don’t lie, and while many singer’s voices would get lost in the cacophony of an orchestra, Dua’s voice was bolstered by the new arrangements.
Without the usual distraction of dancing while she sings, Dua hit every note and then some, forcing one to wonder why she doesn’t have more songs that showcase the rich versatility of her voice.
Still, something was missing.
Dua did speak to the crowd occasionally in her charmingly prim London accent, sounding more like Yasmin on Industry than your average powerhouse pop star, but there was still little sense that she was sharing herself with us more than performing a part.
She took a shot at audience interaction, complimenting someone’s pearls, and even mentioned her own relationships (‘The one thing all my relationships have in common is they just weren’t the right person’), but she still came across as non-specifically as the lounge singer that came to mind when she leaned on a grand piano in elbow length gloves.
Like her or not, no one can argue that Dua Lipa doesn’t have mainstream appeal.
Ever since she emerged as a pop star with hits like Be the One and New Rules around 2017, the songstress has churned out hit after hit at a remarkably steady pace.
A Dua Lipa song is dead-center on the modern pop spectrum and is often lyrically and musically strong, but its also so inoffensive and widely appealing it’s hard to have strong feelings about it one way or the other.
The show’s highlight was undoubtedly when, after a break, Dua reemerged in a glimmering black gown covered in Diamonds and began singing Cold Heart, which soon blended into a cover of Elton John’s Rocket Man.
Except it wasn’t a cover at all, as soon the rocket man himself was unveiled from behind a formation of singers, delivering the iconic song alongside Dua as he perched on a stool.
Her obvious delight at singing with the legendary hitmaker and the almost childlike grin that spread across her face when he presented her to the audience as ‘Your diva!’ was almost enough to paint a deeply likeable image of Dua. She seemed to almost let us in, for a second.
After kissing Elton goodbye she returned to the stage for the live debut of her song Dance the Night (from the Barbie movie soundtrack) and seemed revitalised by the entrance of her dancers onto the stage.
From there, enfolded in the familiar chaos of a stage full of people, real joy emanated from Dua as she sang, eventually spinning around in a flurry of confetti. Still, the stiffness returned during her closing remarks to the audience and things suddenly felt formal again.
Even so, the show was a definite, glittering success full of clever staging, truly astounding musical arrangements, and it even managed to showcase Dua’s voice in a way that may surprise some casual fans unaware of the breadth of her vocal abilities.
But it was hard not to want a little more personality from the undeniably sexy, talented singer.
Looking at the crowd, the extreme mixture of people could be read as a good thing in terms of broad appeal, but it also spoke of a lack of fanaticism.
A Taylor Swift fan has an aesthetic and an almost religious coda, a Chappell Roan fan posts their pronouns on social media and knows how to dress in semi-drag for her concerts, Lady Gaga’s monsters can be spotted a mile away as aging club kids with good taste and probably a penchant for leather.
But Dua Lipa’s fans? They have no cross-section, no truly uniting commonality, and that’s because the singer is so much for everyone she ends up being for no one.
Whatever special or taped event Dua’s night at Royal Albert Hall ends up being made into will certainly be entertaining. It might even be technically good enough to help to cement her among the most talented pop stars of this era – but will it leave fans feeling any closer to her?