PT Entertainment
Dua Lipa took fans for a dip in the deep end in a teaser posted Wednesday for her upcoming third studio album, titled Radical Optimism.
The clip opens with the artist wading through the ocean and cuts to snippets of her working in the studio, and clips of her practicing choreography and photoshoots, leading up to the LP’s release. As music plays in the background, Lipa says in a voiceover: “It’s the beauty of the chaos and trying to stay calm through it. Listening over and over and feeling like, ‘How do I want to tell this story?’”
“I always go for the most upbeat ones to introduce people to the record,” she continues. “I can just keep on dancing and keep people dancing.” Lipa adds, “We’re trying to create a world in a different way, and sonically it was about experimenting. Thematically, it was always about resilience.”
Radical Optimism, due May 3, is set to feature 11 songs and is inspired, in part, by U.K. rave culture.
“A couple of years ago, a friend introduced me to the term Radical Optimism,” the singer said in a press release. “It’s a concept that resonated with me, and I became more curious as I started to play with it and weave it into my life.”
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Lipa further explained the album’s core inspiration. “The term ‘radical optimism’ came into my mind a lot because there were so many ups and downs. There were so many moments where things didn’t go the way that I had planned them to. There were moments where I felt like I was underwater, and you just have to keep going and you have to remain optimistic and things work out in the end one way or another,” she said. “Whenever you feel like something is the worst thing that’s happening, there’s always some light at the end of the tunnel. I’m happy to have made an album that represents that for me.”
