That communal promise had to be repurposed as private reverie as Lipa’s addictively wavy vocals and sublime disco house – an expertly rendered pan-decade hybrid outside space and time – airlifted us out of lockdown and on to a higher plane. If 2020 had gone to plan, Hallucinate would have been the cathartic high point of Dua Lipa’s Glastonbury set: that fateful Worthy Farm moment where wholesome day catalyses into suggestive night, when the weight in your ankles dissipates and the festival truly becomes supernatural. She’s anguished and defeated – no match for decades of socialisation – but the persistent lambent twinkle of the tender, loungey setting hints at how beautiful her vision could be. “No love is like any other love,” she cries, with the force of shovelling dirt. As she imagines her negotiations with her romantic successors, how they might share hand-me-downs and leftover prescriptions, her vocal range hints at the expansiveness of such a possible future, the euphoria and humour and silliness and even ugliness that might overflow with guards lowered. She knows it’s hopeless: “Yet another woman to whom I won’t get through,” she mutters ruefully. It’s between these poles that Fiona Apple vacillates as she proposes establishing a lineage of her ex’s exes, how they might bond by rejecting the conventional mistrust intended to divide them. The resonant double bass on Ladies swings between buoyant ease and defeated slump. Written and recorded during lockdown and amid an uncertain future for nightlife, Lifetime finds comfort in club pop’s revivifying powers and life-enhancing potential in Madley Croft’s reminder to seize the moment, to stay open to the wonder that instils those powerful memories. It suits her gorgeously, also aligning her with that era’s fellow understated divas, Lisa Stansfield and Tracey Thorn.
Romy Madley Croft’s debut single is powerfully – and precisely – nostalgic: as she takes a temporary break from the xx’s intimate hush to explore airy, polychromatic synth-pop, she echoes New Order’s emergence from Joy Division and Vince Clarke abandoning lugubrious Depeche Mode for the pop visions of Yazoo and later Erasure. Powerfully nostalgic … Romy Madley Croft. But this is no sorrowful lament: rappers Denzel Curry and Daylyt deliver long screeds poetically unpicking the twisted US justice system, while Kamasi Washington’s pealing saxophone intensifies the chaos, recalling the wheeling helicopter Curry sees as his verse begins. Martin is a multi-hyphenate talent who has long brought jazz into rap (including as co-producer of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly) here he uses hand drums as an Easter-egg nod to Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues. The frustration, terror and rage experienced by Black people following the killing of George Floyd is distilled into a track that vibrates with post-traumatic stress. LS 18 Terrace Martin and Denzel Curry – Pig Feet (feat Kamasi Washington, G Perico & Daylyt) The fact that any kind of soiree is fantastical right now lends the sisters’ low-key transcendent R&B an extra layer of poignancy, though their regard for 00s classics coupled with the nimble intimacy of contemporary pop songwriting would elevate it in any era. She isn’t summoning woodland spirits but the guardian angels of a charmed night out: “homies only”, “no drama”, “keepin’ it cute”. When Halle Bailey sings the heavenly pre-chorus to Do It, you half expect twittering birds and frolicking squirrels to appear, Snow White-style, as her vocals flutter up the scale. Nimble … Halle and Chloe Bailey of sister duo Chloe X Halle.
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