FEATURE:
Disco 2054
IN THIS PHOTO: Dua Lipa/PHOTO CREDIT: Hugo Comte
Why We Need Another Turn of Dua Lipa’s Star-Studded Live Stream
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THERE have been some really positive reviews…
IN THIS PHOTO: Dua Lipa and Miley Cyrus during her Studio 2054 show/PHOTO CREDIT: Pixie Levinson
for Dua Lipa’s recent Studio 2054 show that was broadcast a few days backl. I have already written about great live-streamed gigs this year and how we might see festivals back in the summer. It is a hard balance of being safe and making sure people are protected but also ensuring that venues and festivals do not crumble. Whilst artists are unable to tour, there has been a whole range of live-streamed and virtual gigs that have entertained fans and used technology in a new way. I am not sure how many streamed gigs there were pre-pandemic, but we have not seen the sheer scope and impressiveness that we are getting now! From artists playing at an empty venue to others streaming from their homes, there has been enough to keep us entertained. Dua Lipa topped a brilliant and successful 2020 by bringing together a host of artists and dancers for a modern-day Studio 54-style bonanza! Here is how The Times summarised the event:
“As unapologetically retro as the disco music on her current album Future Nostalgia, the singer Dua Lipa’s heavily hyped livestreamed concert looked like a nightclub scene in a sleazy 1980s movie.
Filmed live in a warehouse, Studio 2054 promised a night of “music, mayhem, performance, theatre, dance and much more”. In truth, the hour-long concert was more of an extended music video, which will probably have suited Lipa’s paying guests just fine”.
I am going to bring in a review for Studio 2054 as a lot of people tuned in and, when it came to production values and acts, it was a very busy, energetic and fun evening! This year has been one where we have seen a lot of Disco/Disco-related records, and the likes of Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, and Róisín Murphy have released some stunners! I think it is a style of music that should never have died out and, whilst Disco did die back in the early-1980s, I think there are a lot of artists now giving it a new shine and introducing it to fresh and younger demographics! This year has been such a bad and lonely one, so we could do with a lot more fun and engrossing shows like Studio 2054. Variety reviewed the show, and I have selected a couple of passages from it:
“I like it better when we’re intertwined,” Dua Lipa sings in her song “Cool,” maybe speaking for all of us who are doing Thanksgiving weekend and pretty much every other weekend of 2020 unentangled from most human beings. Her performance of that and a host of other songs from her two albums Friday in “Studio 2054,” a pay-per-view event, felt like a happy dispatch from another galaxy, where dancing and dopamine both still occur, and joy is a thing of the present, not past or future nostalgia.
Not much was revealed about the content of the streamed event ahead of time, other than a growing guest list, some of whom were recent collaborators on remixes or side duets (Miley Cyrus, the Blessed Madonna), some of whom were not (Kylie Minogue, Elton John), and the promise that it would be elaborate. But would it be an FX-filled spectacle, a la the recent state-of-the-art livestream from Billie Eilish that was performed on one tiny set but used high technology to give every number a different, often animated setting?
Lipa was having none of that. Her Black Friday show had exactly zero special effects, other than the ones that were arrived at in-camera, as it were, taking place in a few different connected spaces of the multipurpose Printworks venue in London. If anything, the show tried to throw off a low-tech vibe, especially at the beginning, with a determined initial intent to look like something that could have been done in the ’70s, ’80s or ’90s, in keeping with the motifs Lipa goes back to with the sounds of her Grammy-nominated “Future Nostalgia” album.
The guest cameos soon got underway, and the answer to how all these celebs would make their way to London soon became clear: some would, some would not. Lipa went into her elegant-bordello-like “dressing room” and kicked everyone out so that she could watch herself and Miley duet on “Prisoner” on an analog black-and-white TV… with a mutual coziness between the two stars that can only be described as somewhere between slumber-party chic and outrightly non-heteronormative. Next up was a more elaborate collab, “Una Día (One Day),” which had Lipa singing in the flesh but J Balvin, Bad Bunny and Tainy piped in remotely via the groove tube. Finally, thanks no doubt to being a “local” by virtue of her Belgium base, Angèle showed up right in Dua’s faux dressing room for “Fever,” with a level of familiarity just a little less steamy than what Lipa shared with Cyrus.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pixie Levinson
Affirmative exultations and exhalations may have been shared by the audience (which tuned in in waves, as streaming start times were staggered to accommodate fans in time zones around the world). Lipa might not have had to do much besides stand there and sing the bulk of “Future Nostalgia,” which is maybe the most purely enjoyable album of 2020, to make “Studio 5054” worth the relatively economical $11.99 cost of early-bird admission. But, as seen on Lipa’s recent American Music Awards contribution, she and her team have already mastered the jubilance that can come from a long tracking shot that has Lipa and a bare handful of dancers marching toward the camera in time to a four-on-the-floor beat. The creative team (including director Liz Clare, choreographers Charm La’Donna and Alex Clark, and producers Ceremony London) clearly relished the chance to make Lipa the star of something that was undeniably a hairtrigger-tight extravaganza but also felt a little down-home, like a friendly party you could step into without being held back at the velvet rope”.
I am not sure what will happen when live music comes back next year and whether we get any live-streamed gigs. It is impressive that artists like Dua Lipa have adapted and been able to compensate their fans with a live show that, under normal circumstances, would not have happened. It would be sad to think that the Studio 2054 set of last week was a one-off and there will be no more next year.
As much as anything, it was interesting seeing a modern interpretation of Studio 54; a contemporary look and feel but there is blood and essence of the legendary Broadway nightclub. Even when the pandemic has died, it would be pleasing to see more live-streamed gigs like this because, as Sophie Ellis-Bextor proved with her Kitchen Discos this year, there is something intoxicating about watching artist perform in a disco club-type setting. Maybe it is a sense of escape and wanting to return to the 1970s, but the fact so many younger music fans have latched on shows that the appeal and lure of Disco and glitz is universal and evergreen! Given the fact nightclubs are threatened with closure and we are not sure how many will reopen, it might be too much to suggest that we open new clubs like Studio 54 that marry classic and modern Disco. I think Dua Lipa’s live-stream was not only a treat for fans and an impressively produced piece, but I feel it will stoke a fire and compel other artists do the same. It would be tragic to lose live-streamed gigs when things get back to normal and, after some big and interesting Disco-flavoured albums were released this year, many might want another visit to Studio 2054. As I said…maybe it is a romantic to suggest that there could be new Disco clubs opening around the country but, as the genre has definitely not gone away and is being moulded and developed in new and interesting ways, I don’t think we have seen the end of Disco 2054-style streams (let’s hope not anyway). Even though 2020 has been pretty hard and there has been precious little light, there are artists out there determined to get us together and keep us upbeat. For that, we offer…
THANKS to them.