WORTH A LOOK?: ****

WHERE?: Brighton Dome

WHEN: 5/10, world tour runs until 20/4/18

SETLIST: Hotter Than Hell; Dreams/No Lie; Lost In Your Light; Garden; Last Dance; IDGAF; Blow Your Mind (Mwah); Thinking ‘Bout You; New Love; Genesis; No Goodbyes; Scared To Be Lonely; Begging; Homesick; Be The One; New Rules

We arrive at the venue two-and-a-half hours before the doors open and are greeted by dozens of Dua Lipa fans already queueing to see their idol.

• Read on for reasons including what we think album two from Dua will offer

England are playing a football World Cup qualifier tonight but we suspect that’s not the reason why the audience is split perhaps 70/30 in favour of women.

In fact your reviewer is offered crisps by young teenage girls very keen to know what we were scribbling in a notepad between songs (clue: We. Love. Dua. Too) and encouraged to join in with the mass audience handicapping by a gaggle of drunken 50-plus-year-old women who insist on tell us their stories mid-gig. Dua’s appeal is clearly multi-generational.

The casual visitor might be here on the basis of summer number 1 New Rules, one of only two songs on her self-titled debut album the London-born 22-year-old with Albanian parents didn’t have a hand in writing.

Its Rihanna-ish EDM beats married to a catchy tale of female empowerment and resolving not to hook up with an ex is tonight’s closing song and sends the crowd, which had worked itself up into a dancing frenzy a good half hour before our heroine had even taken to the stage, home happy.

This vociferous sell-out crowd know all the words of Dua’s debut album which is lucky because it is that which she plunders with little deviation during tonight’s 70-minute set.

She’s clearly taken lessons from Florence Welch because it is ideas we have seen her deploy including appearing during the crowd for at least two songs that feature tonight and make up for the lack of chat during this opening night of the latest leg of a world tour which will see her join both Coldplay and Bruno Mars later.

It’s the MNEK co-write IDGAF where the stakes are upped tonight. Dua urges the crowd to raise a middle finger to all the ‘f***boys’ who have done them wrong. What impresses most is the husky rasp Dua uses to wring the best from her songbook.

What next? The Chris Martin co-write Homesick is a heartfelt anthem showing she’s in no way outshone by a superstar collaborator. We predict more major collaborations for album two and greater success around the world.

But for the moment let’s get up and dance to one of the best songs of the year (New Rules) and a debut album including a run of great singles like Hotter Than Hell, Blow Your Mind (Mwah) and The One. Dua’s certainly one of the best things to remember 2017 by.

• Picture via Facebook courtesy Dua Lipa. Tickets
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