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Dua Lipa Channels ABBA on Pulsating New Song ‘Training Season’: Single Review
Dua Lipa's new single 'Training Season' - previewed at the Grammy Awards - is a sleek dancefloor track loaded with sly ABBA references.
Few artists have ever fused pop and dance music as fluidly as ABBA, and their influence is writ subtly but large on Dua Lipa ’s new single “Training Season” — the second from her still-untitled forthcoming third album — which was previewed during her performance at the Grammy Awards earlier this month. Driving but not as in-your-face as its predecessor “Houdini,” the song struts along on a powerful disco beat, with a melody that swerves into almost Middle-Eastern scales, reminiscent of ABBA’s biggest disco hits, “Voulez-Vous” and “Gimme Gimme Gimme.” While the initial influence is subtle, it’s unmistakable, and is driven home later in the song with piano flourishes that recalls ABBA keyboardist Benny Andersson’s on many of the group’s hits, most famously “Dancing Queen.” It’s the best kind of tribute: nothing overt, but a sly, fun wink for fans who notice it. “The next morning I arrived to the studio to [cowriters] Caroline and Tobias asking me how it all went and I immediately declared ‘TRAINING SEASON IS OVER,’ and like the best ‘day after’ debriefs with your mates, we had a lot of laughs and it all quickly came together from there.”
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