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Four years ago, Dua Lipa’s Grammy-winning album Future Nostalgia kicked off a disco revival.
Ever since, the disco boom has echoed through charting songs by numerous artists: Kyle Minogue, Lizzo, Róisín Murphy, Jessie Ware, and even Beyoncé. This trend also recently enabled Sophie Ellis Bextor’s ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ (2001) to reclaim its original UK chart position at no.2.
Contemporary funk and disco continue to feature in the 2020s zeitgeist, making this genre an appealing prospect for syncs and A&R.
Although Dua Lipa promised her third album would be a “psychedelic pop-infused tribute to UK rave culture” and worked with psychedelic producer Kevin “Tame Impala” Parker on her new tracks, her latest album Radical Optimism continues Lipa’s previous thread of female-empowering, retro-inspired dance pop.
For example, the album’s lead single, ‘Houdini’, is a playful, confident, electro pop song. There are even melodic nods to Abba in ‘These Walls’, ‘Falling Forever’, and ‘Training Season’, other tracks on Radical Optimism.
Perhaps Lipa's hesitance to veer ‘radically’ from her signature sound reflects her awareness of the disco trend’s continued commercial influence.
Unlike some of her contemporaries, Lipa also opts for broad romantic themes instead of sharing specific details from her private life in the songs. Artists looking for syncs could take a leaf out of her book - naming particular people, places, or dates can alienate music from sync opportunities. Maybe Lipa has this in mind.
Given the appeal of the contemporary disco genre, we decided to explore the SoundCloud catalogue to find independent artists also tapping into this trend. We used the genre and mood profile of Radical Optimism as a template to discover similar confident and playful electro pop tracks that get you in the mood for the dancefloor.
Maybe we’ll see one of these artists on the charts or landing a sync very soon. Give our playlist a listen so you can say you heard it here first.
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