‘Dance the Night’ Marked Dua Lipa’s Farewell to Disco and She Wanted to Make It Count

On her enigmatic new single “Houdini,” Dua Lipa is a slippery illusionist who is hard to catch and quick to leave. It’s reflective of her approach to the latest era of her career as she preps the release of her third studio album, which marks a departure from the disco dream that defined 2020’s Future Nostalgia.

But before Lipa performed her grand vanishing act and disappeared into her new psychedelic soundscape, Barbie the Album executive producer Mark Ronson caught her at just the right moment.

Ronson connected with Lipa for the ambitious Barbie soundtrack via Instagram DMs, pitching her on crafting one of the film’s two most pivotal musical numbers. “These [songs] have to be the ones that paint the picture of the movie,” he told her, according to the Los Angeles Times.