Every time you think Dua Lipa might pause for a break, she even manages to show up Ariana Grande in terms of coming at lightning speed with new releases. On the heels of both Club Future Nostalgia and another remix of “Levitating” featuring DaBaby, Lipa teams up this time with Angèle (the Belgian chanteuse the French are already well-versed in–les américains, not so much).
With its dreamy, ethereal musical intro, the track takes brief inspiration from Kylie Minogue’s own song of the same name from her 2001 album, also called Fever (and, indeed, Future Nostalgia has been compared to, among othe signature dance records, that one). While Peggy Lee might still be the one with the most iconic ditty called this, Dua Lipa and Angèle make a strong case for resuscitating the cliche commonly wielded with this analogy as they sing together, “I’ve got a fever, can you check?/Hand on my forehead, kiss my neck/And when you touch me, baby, I turn red/I’ve got a fever, so can you check?/(Amour en fièvre).” Angèle is sure to add many other of her signature French asides to the mix as she croons (with the sort of sultriness that Lee would be proud of), “Car dans mes yeux, ça se voit/La fièvre dans mes yeux, oui, ça se voit/Mon cœur se serre, j’ai du feu dans la voix/Le plus souvent, c’est quand je pense à toi.”
While it might seem like a ballsy move for Lipa to make fever references try to come across as sexy or longing at a time when everyone is particularly filled with fear of such symptoms, she manages to carry it off. Plus, how could she not have a salacious, malady metaphor-laden song on the French bonus track edition of Future Nostalgia? Which is why this particular number has been released as another single from it (along with the aforementioned “Levitating” remix featuring DaBaby, though why bother when the one with Madonna and Missy already exists?). Produced by Ian Kirkpatrick, who has collaborated with Lipa for other of her hits, including “New Rules,” “Pretty Please” and “Don’t Start Now,” the hypnotizing falsetto of Lipa’s voice during the chorus is deftly complemented by Angèle’s high-pitched seductive lilt as she coos French pop poetry like, “Peut-être qu’avec du temps, ça partira/Et pourtant, et pourtant, et pourtant, je ne m’y vois pas/Comme un médicament, moi je suis rien sans toi/Et je sais que j’essaie, quе je perds du temps dans tеs bras.”
Since there is little one can do these days without a showboating act (because everything is showboating when you have some kind of freedom others don’t during a pandemic) being deemed in poor taste (though some celebrities are patently guiltier than others of outright effrontery), Lipa manages to make the song come across as though it truly does exist in a more romantic time. One in which something as simple as being able to feel giddy about (rather than terrified of) someone in the flesh now sounds like an unfathomable luxury. On a side note, apparently she did engage in one of said “showboating acts” by being reported as “flouting” COVID restrictions during the filming of the music video for the song.
So it is that like some sort of new-fangled Father Damien (incidentally, Belgian like Angèle) in the leper colony, Lipa concludes, “Tell me what you wanna do right now/’Cause I don’t really wanna cool it down.” Consequences of contracting fever in love or in real life be damned. That’s clearly both the British and Belgian sentiment, anyway.
