Ardhitaputri

Let’s get the good news out first: Dua Lipa’s new album is, by any stretch of the drqeaded phrase, not a sophomore slump. Far from it, it’s a cool, compact and breezy listen from start to finish, an item of note in itself compared to her effective and promising yet eventually overstuffed 2017 debut (its Complete Edition contains a whopping 25 tracks). The bad news? Despite its hefty title and obvious quality control, there’s little reward from cursory and repeated listening. Although clearly devised as an attempt to establish her stranglehold in the upper echelons of pop stardom, Future Nostalgia   is, for all intents and purposes, merely a step above your average New Music Friday tunes on Spotify. From Lipa’s perspective, this is understandable. Following a double win at last year’s Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist (the first year with eight nominees in the category to boot), there must have been immense pressure to build on the foundation of this type of recogni...