Exactly the Right Amount of Overkill

Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, Zara Larsson, MØ, and Alma performing IDGAF together in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge in Los Angeles should have been a promotional exercise—five artists in the same room for a camera, press release drafted, everyone moves on. Instead it was one of those sessions that reminds you what it actually sounds like when performers are genuinely present in a room together.

The song is one of those rare pop constructions that works simultaneously as a breakup anthem, a confidence manifesto, and an earworm you can’t shake for three days. Having five different voices run through it adds texture—each of them bringing a slightly different reading of the same central refusal, which is the whole point anyway.

Dua Lipa at that moment felt like everything breaking in the right direction at once. For the debut record she’d spent the previous couple of years in constant transit—LA, London, New York, opening for Troye Sivan on tour across the US, writing in whatever city had the right energy that week. The restlessness is in the music. Dua Lipa was pop rooted deep in hip-hop and soul textures, a record that was very clear about what it wanted to be. IDGAF was one of its sharpest edges.

What made the Live Lounge session work rather than just exist was the looseness of it—five people who don’t need each other sounding like they were made for exactly this combination. Watching that kind of convergence happen in real time, even once, is its own reward. I’d have assembled them myself if I’d had the option.