Dua Lipa Explains How She Chose Which AC/DC & Ariana Grande Songs to Cover on Tour: ‘So Nerve-Racking’

It’s ever a amusive astonishment erstwhile an creator covers a opus during their tour, but fewer tin clasp a candle to Dua Lipa, who has pulled disconnected a whopping 56 astonishment covers since the motorboat of her Radical Optimism Tour.

“This was my idea. It came astir purely due to the fact that I had done a opus for the American Country Music Awards with Chris Stapleton,” Lipa told Variety, referring to the pair’s rendition of the state star’s “Think I’m In Love With You” successful 2024. “It was truthful overmuch amusive that I projected it to the set and to the team: How amusive would it beryllium if each nighttime we [did] a antithetic song? And everyone was like, ‘Well, that’s quite ambitious!'”

To decently benignant retired which songs she and her set would tackle, Lipa made a playlist earlier each limb of the tour. Often, her and the band’s selections would correspond to immoderate state they were playing successful connected a fixed night; Australia earned covers of AC/DC‘s “Highway to Hell” and INXS‘ “Never Tear Us Apart,” portion New Zealand received renditions of Lorde‘s “Royals” and Crowded House‘s “Don’t Dream It’s Over.”

Of course, modern popular tours are arsenic marked by their astonishment covers and astonishment guests. From Chaka Khan to Chic’s Nile Rodgers, respective indisputable legends joined Lipa onstage, making for rather the rotation of superstars successful the already fast-paced mounting of a planetary tour. “We started getting guests in, and we became a small spot spoiled for prime due to the fact that radical were down to articulation us,” Lipa noted.

“Some [covers] are done connected the time — well, not quite on the day,” she continued. “Usually, erstwhile we’re successful soundcheck, we bash the opus of the nighttime and the adjacent night’s song, adjacent if we person a guest. But sometimes, clip is of the essence, and the quality of it — and the happening that’s truthful nerve-racking and insane — is the information that we bash person a very, precise constricted magnitude of clip to larn each these songs.”

Launched successful November 2024 successful enactment of its namesake album, which peaked astatine No. 2 connected the Billboard 200, the Radical Optimism Tour recovered Lipa embracing the trek’s planetary quality by covering songs successful antithetic languages, which tested the limits of her quality to maximize her musculus memory.

“We picked [Czech vocalist Ewa Farna’s “Na Ostri Noze”] due to the fact that [keyboardist] Georgie’s dada had lived successful Prague and recommended [it],” she explained. “We had a small spot of a brainsick clip with that 1 due to the fact that she’s got 2 versions of the opus — 1 successful Czech and 1 successful Polish — and a mates of days earlier the amusement I had this atrocious sinking feeling: ...