Dua lipa

Thursday

Michael Hann

The perfect pop star: Dua Lipa at the O2 Arena reviewed

Dua Lipa’s second album, Future Nostalgia, was released at the least promising moment possible: 27 March 2020, the day after the first lockdown came into force in the UK. Just as a pandemic swept the world, she was releasing a maximalist pop album that, surely, was designed for the communal experiences no one was having. But something about it connected: Future Nostalgia was a worldwide hit, the first British album released in 2020 to go platinum, the tenth bestselling record in the world that year. It turned out to be the right album for a wretched year. No wonder her show at the O2 was centred on it – every

Wednesday

Steerpike

Dua Lipa’s NHS hypocrisy

Last night the great and the not-so-good of Westminster piled into London’s O2 Arena to attend the Brit Awards, the UK’s first major in-person ceremony of the Covid era. Special advisers, Cabinet ministers and ordinary backbenchers were among the 4,000 in attendance to trial how live events might work after the pandemic, with no social distancing or face masks for attendees including Liz Truss, Thérèse Coffey and James Cleverly. But the Tories in attendance were presumably not cheering when British singer Dua Lipa collected one of her two awards of the night and dedicated it to British nurse Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, declaring:  There’s a massive disparity between gratitude and respect for frontline workers