The Meaning Behind “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa and How It Became a Quarantine Meme

Dua Lipa has accomplished a lot in her young career. She’s the only female artist with two albums surpassing 10 billion streams on Spotify. But she also has a podcast and an arts and culture newsletter (Service95), started a book club, and released a fashion collection designed with Donatella Versace.  

Becoming a global pop star is unfathomable for most, but Lipa couldn’t have predicted she’d become the foremost pop star of a worldwide pandemic.  

Though the pandemic postponed her Future Nostalgia Tour, Lipa’s massive hit “Don’t Start Now” became a quarantine meme, and the British and Albanian singer’s star rose even higher during those hazy days of livestream concerts.

Combining multiple eras of dance music, from disco to house beats, “Don’t Start Now” became one of the biggest hit singles of Lipa’s generation.  

Disco in Wyoming?

“Don’t Start Now” is disco nostalgia while looking forward and celebrating female empowerment. The song follows a woman moving on from a past relationship. Her ex isn’t happy she’s gotten over him, but he’s the one who’d initially said “goodbye.”

Aren’t you the guy who tried to
Hurt me with the word “goodbye”
Though it took some time to survive you
I’m better on the other side
I’m all good already
So moved on. It’s scary
I’m not where you left me at all, so

Lipa wrote “Don’t Start Now” with her producer Ian Kirkpatrick and songwriters Caroline Ailin and Emily Warren—the same team behind her hit song “New Rules.” Joe Kentish, the head of A&R at Warner Bros. Records, challenged Kirkpatrick to match the success of “New Rules.”

Warren told Variety Ailin “was just getting over a past relationship and still had lingering feelings of responsibility towards her ex.” The song’s disco influence arrived after a night out dancing near Warren’s home in Wyoming.

If you don’t wanna see me dancing with somebody
If you wanna believe that anything could stop me
Don’t show up, don’t come out
Don’t start caring about me now

Cowbell Disco

Kirkpatrick drew inspiration from Daft Punk, Chic, and Bee Gees for Lipa’s retro-pop track. But he was wary of creating a purely disco song. So, he looked to the Irish dance-punk band Two Door Cinema Club for the song’s cowbell addition. You can trace it to their hit “What You Know” from the Maine band’s 2010 debut album Tourist History.

After hearing the track, Kentish thought the song’s middle section was an afterthought. Kirkpatrick told Sound on Sound he remedied the problem by adding additional drums inspired by The Weeknd’s song “Can’t Feel My Face.” He also used a variety of studio plugins to create a “vocal chop” from Lipa’s performance.

Ending at the Beginning

Nabil Elderkin (known as Nabil) directed the music video and wrote the initial treatment after skateboarding around London while listening to the song. Nabil and Lipa first met on the Yves Saint Laurent campaign for Lipa’s fragrance.

The video follows Lipa in a pub, then at a crowded nightclub where she dances under a disco ball. A scene change locates Lipa dancing at a masquerade ball where the eyes on the wall paintings follow her movements. Nabil used creepy eyes and an overall gloomy aesthetic to offset the song’s upbeat disco vibe.

She returns to the nightclub while the video is montaged between disco and bathroom scenes, recapping the night’s events.

Late in the editing stage, Lipa suggested using the final scene to begin the video. It’s a point-of-view shot where Lipa appears to push someone from the club and then shoves them (presumably her ex) to the pavement.

COVID Meme

In March 2020, the world quickly entered a new phase. As COVID-19 spread, terms like “social distancing” entered the English lexicon. Lipa’s second album, Future Nostalgia, arrived as the world quarantined.

“Don’t Start Now,” already released as a single in 2019, became a meme for social distancing. Lipa shared an existing meme to her social media accounts with a bullet point list on how to avoid the coronavirus using the song’s lyrics.

Lipa’s single reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 chart and No. 2 on the Hot 100 chart. Future Nostalgia received two Grammy nominations—Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album. It won the latter.

Finally, You Can Have It Both Ways

Albert Einstein observed that fast-moving objects experience time more slowly than when they are at rest. Lipa’s disco banger achieves its own time dilation by quickly moving through pop eras and creating the strobe-light effect of blinking quickly while dancing bodies appear to move slowly.

“Don’t Start Now” is a fitting song defining an album that warps time beautifully.

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Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy