Dua Lipa turned Wembley into Studio 54 with better pyrotechnics. The Camden-raised pop star knows something that half the music world forgot: disco never died, it just went underground until someone with actual chops could resurrect it properly.
KISS figured this out in the ’70s when they dropped “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.” Disco is cool when you stop pretending it isn’t. Dua gets it. She’s not cosplaying the Bee Gees; she’s channeling their spirit through a modern filter that actually works.
The surprise moment came when Charli XCX materialized for “360” on the B-stage. Two generations of pop intelligence colliding in real time, proving that the best collaborations happen when artists actually respect what the other brings to the table. No manufactured drama, just two women who understand how to make a crowd move.
What separates Dua from the endless parade of pop wannabes is her understanding of live performance as actual performance. She’s not just playing tracks and hoping for the best. She’s working multiple stages, switching up arrangements, keeping 90,000 people locked in for nearly three hours. That takes real skill.
The Camden connection shows in her approach. There’s a rock and roll backbone underneath all that disco glitter. She knows how to build momentum, when to pull back, when to hit the gas. “Physical” into “Electricity” into “Hallucinate” was a master class in understanding your audience’s attention span.
By the time “Don’t Start Now” closed the night with its extended dance break, Wembley had been converted. Not to disco necessarily, but to the idea that pop music can still be an event worth leaving the house for.
