Dua says the title of her new album, Radical Optimism, is partly a reference to the uncertainty of her early days.
“I thought it was so important, the idea of pushing through when things feel like they aren’t going well. Because often, with hindsight, you can say, ‘This thing that really upset me, I can see from a different perspective now’.”
It’s a mindset she brought to the album. Writing sessions actually began in 2021, as a way of staying productive when the pandemic put her Future Nostalgia tour on hold.
“I knew the title that early,” she says. “I felt like I had to write myself into a good idea.”
However, the early sessions were fruitless. The new sound she was searching for didn’t materialise until she finally hit the road in 2022.
The thrill of playing her music with a live band inspired her to take the same approach in the studio. Programmed beats and loops were replaced by live drums, flamenco guitar and even, on a song called Maria, the sound of a Polynesian nose flute.
She calls it “alternative but pop, with a touch of psychedelia”.
