Dua Lipa had to postpone her Future Nostalgia tour three times, but once she was on tour, inspiration for new music came pretty quickly. In fact, she started writing her latest song, “Houdini,” while she was on tour, she tells Rolling Stone.
Lipa returned to London’s 5dB, where she wrote much of her upcoming third album, for an RS podcast conversation to tell the story of how ‘Houdini’ came to be. She explains that she spent time in Los Angeles, where Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker invited her to his home studio.
“Kevin was sitting at the computer working on the monitors… and he just played a track,” Lipa remembers. The sound was the riff that introduces the single and she felt “immediately inspired.” The “essence” of the track was born in the first two hours of listening to the riff, and the chorus quickly took shape with the help of Caroline Ailin and Tobias Jesso Jr.
Club mix from “Houdini” is coming
During another session in London with Danny L. Harle, Parker came up with the idea for the song’s middle section, which changes chords and tempo before transitioning into a synthesizer solo. It helped bring together the dark, clubby euphoria that Lipa wanted to achieve with “Houdini.” She says there’s a secret extended club mix that expands on the psychedelic outro that she wants to release in the future.
When the song was created, Lipa worked on four different versions of the verses before she felt it was finished. She shows off a thick notebook — a random one, she says, that she bought at CVS — full of doodles and lyrics that carried her through all the sessions for her third LP. “I have 97 songs,” she says, holding up the notebook. “Houdini,” like the rest of the album, has a more diary-like approach, and their sessions with Parker, Harle, Ailin and Jesso felt like they had formed a band of sorts.
Dua Lipa has found herself
“The time I spent in the studio, working with different people, honing my craft and writing so many songs has also brought me to a place where I feel really confident in who I am and what I want.” , she says. “I feel like my voice has gotten stronger through touring, and there are so many different levels in which I’ve grown as an artist. It was very easy for me to not get distracted by all these other incredible artists.”
“Houdini” is the first taste of more music to come from Lipa, also centered around the funnier side of single life. She came to the sessions with a lot of “ammunition” from her own experiences that went into these songs.
The song is also the most “lively” track, building a bridge between Future Nostalgia and their current situation. “It really felt like it summed up everything that was to come, even though everything that was to come was so different. It just felt like a fun way to start something new.”
This text is a translation of an article from rollingstone.com