Friday, January 8th, 2016

Dua Lipa – Be the One

I guess she is The One this week.


[Video]
[6.83]

Crystal Leww: 2016 could very well be the year that social media websites become a place to mine legitimate artists after so many years of eyerolling about it. Youngsters like Alessia Cara and Shawn Mendes got their starts on YouTube and Vine, respectively, and both hit the top 10 on the Hot 100 with their own original songs. Dua Lipa was not borne organically from these sites: she posted a cover of Cara’s “Here” at the same time she was working with Lana Del Rey’s management team, but it’s clear that young stars are expected to appear down-to-earth, appear as though they don’t necessarily have these massive teams behind them with these cover videos and doling out candids on their own Instagrams. Her music is anything but amateurish though; “New Love” was shiny and “Be the One” is even more polished, clearly worked on by producers who have mixing experience rather than other teen girls with bedroom recording equipment and releasing music via Soundcloud. The sheen on “Be the One” doesn’t necessarily make sense; her partner having left and her begging them to come back is certainly melancholy subject material, but those hand claps and the stuttering vocal delivery on beat sound euphoric. This sounds expensive, and I wish Dua Lipa would take a note from her young peers’ books and quiet it down.
[5]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: Charming up-tempo love song, with some shades of afternoon melancholy via the synths and the vinyl hiss. It wouldn’t be any remarkable if Dua Lipa’s voice wasn’t such a beautiful warm breeze that melts my winter heart. 
[7]

Scott Mildenhall: Orrico was exuberant and Bao was desolate, but Dua Lipa is a mix of both when declaring that she could be the one. Throughout she bursts with desperate insistence, hurriedly stamping out those words as if in anguished dance, with the rhythm of want running through her. It comes over as pure feeling, and it’s certainly pure craft – in particular, there’s nothing as wonderful as a sudden drop-fade climax to leave the conflict lingering.
[7]

Dorian Sinclair: That almost pizzicato-sounding figure that underpins nearly the entire song is deceptive in its simplicity. It’s such a spare little pattern, but it really holds the entire instrumental part together, inflecting the ways in which other instruments come in and shape themselves around it. Its repetitiveness mirrors the repetition in the lyrics, repetition which — thanks to skilled phrasing and vocal delivery — keeps pulling forward, rather than stagnating or growing boring. I really admire the construction of “Be the One”, but more than that I find it really fun to listen to. “oh cause you got inside my head” has rarely seemed so apt a lyric.
[9]

Thomas Inskeep: Luscious pop song by a young woman with a rich, luscious voice, building to an unintentionally anthemic chorus (i.e. it’s not trying too hard). And even whilst sounding anthemic, it’s also kind of minimalist. Lipa already sounds like a star, and based on “Be the One,” deserves to be one posthaste.
[8]

Madeleine Lee: The swift, airy production makes a great setting for the richness of Lipa’s voice, and makes her sound better than if it had tried to match her with more drawn-out drama. This is the one sound on the longlist that I’d like to hear more of in 2016.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Minimalist choral house with a sampled guitar arpeggio and the hook repeated as the sonic settings change, from a bleak synth landscape to hints of gospel.
[7]

Josh Winters: “Be The One” makes me uncontrollably giddy the same way your go-to 80s rom-com can, and therefore, I have to resort to an alliterative adjective dump: frisky, fluorescent, feel-good.
[9]

Brad Shoup: Even though this hasn’t a bridge to speak of, I love it dearly: it’s nothing but earnest wishes and the fear that something’s gone. The three-note ostinato (very “Boys of Summer”) is twinned in Lipa’s verses; it’s a very basic track, but sometimes we are not very complex.
[9]

Will Adams: “Be the One” seems handcrafted for late night enjoyment: the reverb is the aural equivalent to falling backward onto a king-size comforter, the synths twinkle like star ceilings. Dua Lipa’s vocal pushes a bit too hard at times, clashing with the production; in flashes she evokes the reserve of Jessie Ware, which would have been a more fitting vocal approach.
[6]

Micha Cavaseno: To the credit of “Be the One,” it sounds like an encapsulation of a certain kind of song that’s running around and making money. What a shame that it’s not much of a song by itself.
[3]

Ramzi Awn: There’s a good song hiding in here somewhere, but the quaint arrangement doesn’t do much to show it off.   
[4]

Reader average: [9.7] (17 votes)

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3 Responses to “Dua Lipa – Be the One”

  1. THIS SONG IS A [10]

  2. surprised this wasn’t the first song to break a [7] of 2016, but close enough for me

  3. “Waiting All Night” meets “So Sweet”. Sooooo good.