Dua Lipa Delivers the ‘Future Nostalgia’ Show New York Has Been Waiting Two Years for: Concert Review

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorAfter what we’ve all been through in the past two years, every concert feels like a miracle, but a Dua Lipa show more than most.

On the surface it might be easy to underestimate the heavy emotions associated with her “Future Nostalgia” album, which was famously released on March 27, 2020, just as the horrors of the pandemic were becoming clear: It’s a dance-party album that arrived at seemingly one of the worst possible times in human history for a dance party album, when there were no parties and the only dancing was done on our own.Yet instead of striking a sour note or seeming like a cruel taunt, it was many people’s escape, their comfort food, their crying blanket — a reminder not only of what we couldn’t have, but what we hoped to get back as everyone wondered, without exaggeration, when or if we’d ever be at a concert or on a crowded dancefloor again.

The album came to symbolize what we’d do again once we could — dress up, dance, flirt, sing along with strangers to shared favorite songs, enjoy the closeness of other humans while celebrating the freedom that the album’s songs came to symbolize.

And on Tuesday night at New York’s Madison Square Garden, almost exactly on the two-year anniversary of the pandemic’s beginning — as Russian missiles fell on Ukraine and the president delivered his State of the Union address to a deeply divided country — the sold-out crowd shut everything else out, because that moment was finally here.Make no mistake, it was a moment: every major concert at Madison Square Garden feels like the center of the universe, and the crowd, an equal mix of teens and adults basically channeling their teens, was dressed to the nines — the boots alone would have made a.