Dua Lipa stepped up to the Tiny Desk and opened with a question aimed squarely at the room: ‘Are you someone that I can give my heart to, or just the poison that I’m drawn to?’ The song was ‘Training Season,’ and before the first chorus landed, the audience was already answering with applause. For anyone who has ever tried to tell the difference between the right person and the familiar wrong one, the stakes of that opening line were immediate. By the time the full band locked into the final refrain, the performance had already moved past concert and into something closer to a confessional.
A desk she had always wanted to reach
Lipa was quick to acknowledge the weight of the moment. ‘I’ve always wanted to come down and be by the desk,’ she told the crowd, noting that her first Tiny Desk appearance had been an at-home session recorded in 2020. This in-person set, built around songs from her album ‘Radical Optimism,’ felt like the real arrival. She introduced ‘These Walls’ next, a track about a relationship that both people know is finished but neither will be the first to end. The band dropped to a near-whisper during the verses, which made the chorus land harder every time it came back around. ‘It’s not supposed to hurt this much,’ she sang, and the room stayed very still.
The most disarming moment of the afternoon came before the third song. Lipa paused to set up ‘Happy for You’ with unusual candor: it is, she explained, a song about her ex-boyfriend getting a new girlfriend and her being genuinely glad for him. ‘Believe it or not,’ she added, with a short laugh that suggested she still found the feeling a little surprising herself. The song earns that premise. ‘I must have loved you more than I ever knew,’ she sang, and the line landed not as bitterness but as a kind of belated, grateful clarity.
The band behind six years of shows
Before the final song, Lipa stopped to introduce each musician by name. Singers Kira and Naomi, she noted, have been with her for more than six years. Sophie Galpin was on what Lipa called, with evident delight, the ‘kids glockenspiel.’ Alexander Lanan on guitar, Matty Carol on bass, Smiley on drums, and Georgie Ward on keys completed the lineup. ‘Matty’s been with me since day one,’ she said. ‘We’ve performed every single show together.’ It was a small gesture, naming each person in front of a live audience, but it changed the texture of the closing number, ‘Houdini,’ from a pop showcase into something that felt like a band playing for the pleasure of it.
Sophie Galpin and the kids glockenspiel
The instrument sat in the middle of the setup, small and a little incongruous among the guitars and keys, catching the room’s attention each time Galpin reached for it.
When ‘Houdini’ ended and the crowd noise peaked, Lipa taught the room a double clap and ran the final chorus one more time with the audience locked in. ‘Training Season,’ she had said at the top, is over. Standing at the Tiny Desk with a full band and a room that knew every word, it was easy to believe her.
