“What a dream it is to be in this room,” Dua Lipa declared at the start of her set at the Royal Albert Hall. “I’ve been looking forward to this for such a long time. It’s a show unlike any other I’ve done before.”
Which is quite an achievement, given how many career milestones she's ticked off. This has been Lipa’s year. She’s had a new album out. She’s played Glastonbury – to an audience of hundreds of thousands. She’s about to set off on a world tour. So what better way to celebrate than by playing the Royal Albert Hall for the first time – with a 53-piece backing orchestra to provide the music?
Accordingly, the Hall was wearing its glad rags: massive LED light strips wound from floor to ceiling and surrounded a huge S-shaped stage in the middle of the audience. The orchestra (The Heritage Orchestra, to be precise) situated on either side comprised a string section, trumpets for days and a harpist. And to top it all off, there was a choir.
This was a theatrical spectacle, and Lipa, arriving dressed like a Fifties screen siren (with her hair newly dyed black), duly gave it her all. “Are you guys ready for a party tonight?” she cried. The rapturous response was enough of an answer. And that was before she brought on Elton John to duet.
She certainly gave it her all. The set was consistently surprising – not just in the songs she chose, but in the way that transposing them from synths to strings revealed new facets to the music. We had End of An Era, which was transformed into a funk-heavy bop. It swiftly segued into her recent Radical Optimism hit Houdini, which combined flashing blue lights with a slinky, percussion-heavy beat, and Levitating, which went delightfully heavy on the tubas.
Throughout it all, Lipa strutted around the stage, working her way from one side of the crowd to the other in a huge circle, pausing to wave at audience members and applaud their outfits. “Let’s go!” she cried towards the end of Houdini, and Royal Albert Hall or not, the crowd shot to their feet and began to dance.
It was all surprisingly intimate from a star of her wattage – not least when she paused the proceedings to announce that she was planning to perform a cover of her favourite song “by a fellow London girl”. That turned out to be a stripped-back version of Cleo Sol’s Sunshine, and Lipa transformed it into a showcase for her powerful voice.
The end result, complete with strings, almost resembled something out of a Bond theme tune. But while the fans cheered for that, they howled for her hits, which she duly trotted, one after the other. Training Season. Pretty Please. Illusion. A standout performance of These Walls, which became a soul ballad in the hands of the orchestra.
But the best was saved for last. A slightly awkward, drawn-out intermission where Lipa left for an outfit change ended with the choir gathering at one end of the stage and then parting to reveal – gasp – none other than Elton John... yes, the Rocket Man himself. What a power move.
He was very game as they duetted on their song Cold Heart, while rainbow lights flashed overhead, and when Lipa closed out proceedings with a triple-whammy of her biggest hits – Barbie song Dance The Night, Don’t Start Now and one of her oldest hits, Be The One – the cheers could probably be heard from space.
A party she promised us, and a party it was. As the confetti rained down overhead, the smile on Lipa’s face filled the hall. And well it might be: after a gig like this, a world tour is going to be a cinch.
