Consequence‘s Song of the Week series highlights the best new releases of the week. Find these new favorites and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist, and for other great songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Dua Lipa returns with — what else? — a dance floor-ready bop.
Dua Lipa is officially back. The artist’s 2020 project, Future Nostalgia, included several nods to the ’80s, while “Houdini” kicks things back another decade: the Kevin Parker-produced single begins with a beat reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
Dua Lipa has reportedly written 97 songs to be considered for her next album, and “Houdini” is a somewhat familiar but undoubtedly fun way to start off her next chapter. It doesn’t feel all that different from the artist who so thoroughly flourished on Future Nostalgia — she absolutely knows how to write an addictive chorus, and the organ solo in the bridge is an inspired choice.
The music video leans into the ’70s energy with Dua decked in a Chorus Line-ready leotard as she shimmies through something less akin to choreography and more like the type of free-spirited movement people might break out in the club: It’s sweaty, it’s contagious, and it’s confident. It’s also funny that the flighty artist, known for constantly being on the go and jet-setting from glamorous locale to equally glamorous locale, would choose to center the song on being impossible to pin down. Go girl, give us everything, indeed.
“Houdini” is also refreshing in the fact that it stretches past three minutes, a simple benchmark that has become all too rare for pop songs in the TikTok age. It’s hard to keep people’s attention these days — but if anyone was going to be able to do so in a week packed with Grammy nominations and so much more, it was Dua Lipa.
— Mary Siroky
Associate Editor
