Pop idol Dua Lipa brought screaming color and breathtaking sensuality to Boston’s TD Garden last Friday, after her tour was previously postponed due to the pandemic. Street vendors waved around t-shirts bearing her face as brightly-dressed fans lined up, vaccine cards and masks in hand.
We piled into the dimly lit arena with a sea of these eclectic, glittering fans. People were in every direction- it was surreal. The only empty space in the entire arena was the gap between the mass of people in the pit pressed tightly up against the stage and the beginning of the rows of seats. Anticipation buzzed through the air. Moments after the lights went down and fans erupted in screams, Lipa emerged from under the stage in a neon green jumpsuit singing the opening bars to her explosive hit “Physical.” The sensation of touch presided over the concert from its beginning. Lipa’s backup dancers, clad in complementary colors, twirled her around as she began her set shouting, “Let’s get physical!” We did.
Physicality governed the rest of the concert. Lipa, held by her backup dancers, perfectly delivered carnal lines like, “I need your hands on me, sweet relief, pretty please,” and, “even electricity can’t compare to what I feel when I’m with you.” As fans danced and reveled in being near each other, Lipa’s voice radiated through the air like electricity. She made us feel through one another.
For “Levitating,” one of her most popular songs, Lipa donned a breathtaking black cutout bodysuit that stood in perfect contrast with the radiant astral backdrop behind her. Lipa glittered, star-like, in front of bright, orbiting rainbow planets. This created a sensational illusion and genuinely brought the audience into another world.
Ending the show with “Don’t Start Now,” Lipa’s rainbow planets burst into streams of breathtaking color behind her. “Boston, one more time!” she shouted as confetti exploded around her. Lipa’s concert ended how it began: in a euphoric fusion of sound and color.
“I was in the balcony seats, but the amount of energy I felt from her performance felt like I was in a mosh pit,” remarks Cole Cleary ’25, “If I was actually on the floor, I think I might’ve exploded.”
Piper Tingleaf ’24 echoed this feeling, noting “The energy was incredible. She put on an insanely good performance.”
Lipa, in her awe-inspiring performance, dissolved the borders around her identity as she simultaneously dissolved the line between the senses. With her Future Nostalgia tour, Lipa has managed to break out of a confining identity as a typical pop icon. She proves, with stunning artistic production and performance, that she is not just a cheap viral Tik Tok soundtrack, but a genuine artist. “I wanted to make something that felt nostalgic but had something fresh and futuristic about it too,” Lipa said in an iHeart Radio News interview. She succeeded. Future Nostalgia at TD garden was a once in a lifetime synesthetic performance of eye-catching visuals and thrilling acoustics.
Dua Lipa’s music sounds like touch and togetherness. With the release of her album Future Nostalgia on March 27, 2020, shortly after the world shutdown from Covid-19, fans found a colorful escape from the dullness of quarantine and some semblance of unity. Two years later, Lipa’s tour kicked off in a newly reopened world of starved fans craving in-person concerts. Lipa’s timing was perfect: the Kosovan-British pop star was able to virtually deliver color to the lives of fans during quarantine and now can finally bring that color to life on tour. A collective gratitude for being physically together was palpable in the arena that Friday night. You couldn’t help but scream, “I’m levitating.”
Kayla Reifel ’25 (kaylareifel@college.harvard.edu) and Megan Joel ’25 (mjoel@college.harvard.edu) are comping the Independent