For a disc with a title like Radical optimism, Dua Lipa's third album, doesn't shy away from talking about not-so-positive things, like breakups. Pre-release singles like “Houdini” and “Training Season” offered early glimpses of the singer's complications in romance, but neither compare to “These Walls,” the album's surprising, big song.
The mid-album tune is a bit of a box of tricks. After three heavy, rave-ready songs, the surfy, wind-swept “These Walls” first enters like a balm (production courtesy of Danny L Harle), hooking you into a joyous ease, until you hear her scathing lyrics about a relationship. beyond repair. Lyrically, it features some of Lipa's sharpest writing on the entire record, and is the only song labeled “explicit,” making it a curio standout and early fan favorite.
In an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, Lipa said she wrote the song on January 16, 2023: “a good day.” He said he came up with the idea for the track about being able to feel the energy of two people who have been arguing when you walk into a room. “Rooms capture things and cling to things,” he said. “I think this song is a really good example of addressing the inevitable, it's that conversation that nobody really wants to have, but you have to.”
The song opens with Lipa cleverly illustrating a couple who have grown accustomed to shutting each other out. “Maybe we should switch careers / 'Cause baby, you know ain't nobody beat us poker face / And when the night ends in tears / Wake up and we blame it on losing,” he sings.
But the chorus is where she gets real, singing that “if these walls could talk” they'd say, “Enough, give up, you're screwed.” She continues, “It's not supposed to hurt this much / Of, if these walls could talk / They'd tell us to break.”
Nowhere else on the album does Lipa sound as definitive and bold as she does cursing up a storm on “These Walls,” which is saying something. When on the rest of the album, Lipa sings vaguely about being “dizzy” while falling for someone, and yearning for a love that “feels like a rodeo” (frustrated critics are already calling Lipa a pop star ” no lore”), the intensity of “These Walls” feels surprisingly personal, and the opposite of “no lore”.
Of course, when it comes to fleshing out the details, Lipa still leaves very little breadcrumbs to follow. (The only clue is that date, January 16, 2023, which sits unhelpfully in the middle of a two-year stretch when Lipa was single.) But maybe that's her strategy: When she gives a little, she ends up moving up to a lot
Dua Lipa's 'Radical Optimism' is out now.
