Dua Lipa is all about 'Radical Optimism,' in her music and other pursuits

abcnews.go.com:

Grammy-award winning pop star Dua Lipa's third album, “Radical Optimism,” releases Friday

NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Dua Lipa is floating in the ocean, the sun just beginning to set behind her. She looks strong, serene — save for the looming threat of a massive shark, fin just breaching the surface a few feet away.

The image is the cover of her third album, “Radical Optimism,” out Friday. It is an apt visual representation for an album about finding and protecting your peace in dangerous waters — a thematic maturation for the Grammy-award winning pop superstar, who has long identified her sound as “dance-crying."

That cheeky term encapsulates the clubby jubilance of her biggest pop hits, but «Radical Optimism,» with its psychedelic electro-pop, complicates it.

“There’s definitely something more cathartic that comes with the third album,” she told The Associated Press recently.

“'Future Nostalgia' was my chance for me to be able to do a very polished pop-dance-disco record,” she says of her 2020 sophomore release. “Radical Optimism,” alternatively, was informed by what she's learned from touring the world over the last few years — drawing influence from trip hop and Britpop and including newfound interest in live instrumentation.

“It was so much more free flowing,” she says of her latest album's creative process. “And it didn’t have a formula, per se, but I always had that pop sensibility in the back of my mind. But I wanted to just experiment and try and create something new. But I think this was always kind of the album that I’ve always wanted to make.”

In more ways than one: Around her first album, Lipa wrote down that she'd like to work with Tame Impala's Kevin Parker — specifically on her third album. The