Dua Lipa loves a challenge during her Radical Optimism Tour. The British pop star sings a local hit in every country: in Amsterdam on Tuesday, that was Bloed, Zweet & Tranen by André Hazes. A striking choice in her danceable pop repertoire.
As an artist, you have to be good to surprise your fans during a concert. A large part of your audience is no longer seeing your show for the first time: images from earlier concerts are massively viewed on TikTok and Instagram. No choreography or outfit change comes as a surprise anymore.
So the pop stars of today have to look for unpredictable elements. For example, Taylor Swift sang a different song on piano and guitar every night on her Eras Tour, which fans speculated about beforehand. Lipa has given it her own twist by covering a local hit each time.
Fans in France were treated to Alizée’s Moi… Lolita and in Germany she sang Nena’s 99 Luftballons. On Tuesday evening, she gave her first of two shows in the Amsterdam Ziggo Dome. Her Dutch fans try to guess in advance what they will be served. Maybe a nineties hit from the Vengaboys or 2 Unlimited? Surely she won’t really sing in Dutch?
“Tonight I’m going to sing a song by an Amsterdam icon. Sing along if you know it,” the 29-year-old Lipa tells the Dutch audience before starting Bloed, Zweet & Tranen by Hazes. Apart from a few bewildered looking non-Dutch Lipa fans, the Ziggo Dome turns into a brown cafe for a moment as the singer deftly works her way through the Dutch lyrics.
Dua Lipa sings Bloed, Zweet en Tranen during concert in Amsterdam
Lipa’s grandparents are present at the concert
That Lipa knows a bit of Dutch is not entirely surprising. Part of her family lives in Leiden and she has visited them regularly since a young age. Her ex Anwar Hadid also has Dutch family with whom the singer went to visit. When she thanks the audience towards the end of the show, she calls the Netherlands her “second home”. She proudly announces that her grandparents are in the hall tonight.
They see their granddaughter give a flashy show with all the trimmings. Lipa is assisted by twelve dancers and confetti or fireworks regularly fly into the air. The show is divided into four parts, each with its own outfit, screen visuals and light show.
Where many of her dancing colleagues lean on vocals that are partly on tape, Lipa does everything live. She is assisted by two backing singers. Anyone who has seen the singer live in the first years of her career can see that she has made progress with her choreography.
She will probably never be a dancer for whom it all comes completely naturally. But it is clear that she has worked hard on it since a video went viral in 2018 in which her dance moves were ridiculed. She seems to have gotten more fun out of it.
Intimacy between all the hits
On the evening of Lipa in the Ziggo Dome, it becomes especially clear how many hits she has scored since her breakthrough in 2016. When she leaves the stage for the first time after an hour and a half for the encore, you think for a moment that you have already heard her biggest hits with One Kiss, Levitating and Be The One. But then New Rules, Houdini and Don’t Start Now still have to come.
The fact that her third album Radical Optimism is a slightly less resounding commercial success than predecessor Future Nostalgia is not noticeable to the Amsterdam audience. Those numbers are also received with open arms.
Although Lipa puts on a tight show for seventeen thousand fans, including fewer teenage girls than in the audience of many colleagues, she also seeks some personal contact. She chats in between, occasionally takes selfies and films a piece with a fan’s phone.
When she sings Anything For Love on a floating platform in the middle of the hall, she even creates a quiet moment. By holding the microphone far from her mouth, the song sounds small and subdued. Still an intimate moment between the confetti cannons.