Dua Lipa Explains How She Chose Which AC/DC & Ariana Grande Songs to Cover on Tour: ‘So Nerve-Racking’

It’s always a fun surprise when an artist covers a song during their tour, but few can hold a candle to Dua Lipa, who has pulled off a whopping 56 surprise covers since the launch of her Radical Optimism Tour.

“This was my idea. It came about purely because I had done a song for the American Country Music Awards with Chris Stapleton,” Lipa told Variety, referring to the pair’s rendition of the country star’s “Think I’m In Love With You” in 2024. “It was so much fun that I proposed it to the band and to the team: How fun would it be if every night we [did] a different song? And everyone was like, ‘Well, that’s quite ambitious!’”

To properly sort out which songs she and her band would tackle, Lipa made a playlist before each leg of the tour. Often, her and the band’s selections would correspond to whatever country they were playing in on a given night; Australia earned covers of AC/DC‘s “Highway to Hell” and INXS‘ “Never Tear Us Apart,” while New Zealand received renditions of Lorde‘s “Royals” and Crowded House‘s “Don’t Dream It’s Over.”

Of course, modern pop tours are equally marked by their surprise covers and surprise guests. From Chaka Khan to Chic’s Nile Rodgers, several indisputable legends joined Lipa onstage, making for quite the rotation of superstars in the already fast-paced setting of a global tour. “We started getting guests in, and we became a little bit spoiled for choice because people were down to join us,” Lipa noted.

“Some [covers] are done on the day — well, not quite on the day,” she continued. “Usually, when we’re in soundcheck, we do the song of the night and the next night’s song, even if we have a guest. But sometimes, time is of the essence, and the beauty of it — and the thing that’s so nerve-racking and insane — is the fact that we do have a very, very limited amount of time to learn all these songs.”

Launched in November 2024 in support of its namesake album, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, the Radical Optimism Tour found Lipa embracing the trek’s global nature by covering songs in different languages, which tested the limits of her ability to maximize her muscle memory.

“We picked [Czech singer Ewa Farna’s “Na Ostri Noze”] because [keyboardist] Georgie’s dad had lived in Prague and recommended [it],” she explained. “We had a little bit of a crazy time with that one because she’s got two versions of the song — one in Czech and one in Polish — and a couple of days before the show I had this awful sinking feeling: ‘What if we just learned this whole song in Polish?’ I was panicking about that, but we triple-checked that we were doing it in Czech.”

Lipa also shared that she chose certain covers based on her personal connection to the songs. At her first of four Madison Square Garden shows, she played Alicia Keys‘ “No One,” which she performed at a talent show when she was 11 years old. On her first night in Toronto, Lipa opted for Nelly Furtado‘s “I’m Like a Bird,” an example of the “Nelly that I fell in love with because the first CD I ever bought was Woah, Nelly!”

Although Lipa is known for her radio-ruling pop hits, she isn’t completely ruling out the possibility of compiling her rock, funk and R&B covers on a proper album. “I cannot reveal the answer!” she quipped.

The Radical Optimism Tour officially concludes on Dec. 5 at Mexico City’s Estadio GNP Seguros.