ABOVE: (L-R) Missy Elliott, Dua Lipa, The Blessed Madonna and Madonna, photo courtesy Lipa/Twitter.
British singer Dua Lipa has teamed up with Queen of Pop Madonna and rap icon Missy Elliott for the remix of her latest single “Levitating.”
On July 27, Lipa tweeted out the official release date of the remix, Aug. 14, and called the reworked track a “dream come true.” The song has been remixed by DJ/producer The Blessed Madonna and will also feature vocals from Madonna and Missy Elliott.
LEVITATING REMIXED BY THE BLESSED MADONNA FEATURING MY IDOLS MADONNA & MISSY ELLIOTT – 14TH OF AUGUST – DREAM COME TRUE LETS GO!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/qoj9c3WCIM
— DUA LIPA (@DUALIPA) July 27, 2020
“Levitating” was originally co-produced by Stuart Price, the British producer behind Madonna’s Grammy-winning 2005 album “Confessions on a Dance Floor.” The song serves as the fifth single from Lipa’s sophomore album “Future Nostalgia.” The album, which debuted at No.4 on the Billboard 200 Chart, landed the songstress a Mercury Prize nomination and the record of the longest-running top 10 song by a British female solo artist.
Lipa, Madonna and Missy Elliot are all allies of the LGBTQ community and have used their platforms to champion LGBTQ equality in some form.
In the music video for her 2016 single “Blow Your Mind (Mwah),” Lipa conspicuously featured a Pride flag and NoH8 sticker – a reference to the LGBTQ-inclusive organization of the same – in one of the video’s scenes. In February of this year, the singer also performed at the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Madonna is widely considered an LGBTQ icon and has been credited with bringing queerness to mainstream pop culture.
“For the gay men who were there in the beginning, when she was shaking it on the dance floors of New York City, the men who reveled in her early hits, Madonna was the ultimate expression of in-your-face sexuality,” Ari Karpel of The Advocate wrote in 2012. “She was self-possessed and uninhibited… Madonna boldly toyed with transgender imagery on a grand stage: [s]he co-opted the Harlem drag balls for the ‘Vogue’ video, she featured trans people and cross-dressers of all stripes in her banned ‘Justify My Love’ video and her coffee-table tome, ‘Sex’, posited couples in all sorts of configurations. Her high profile are-they-or-aren’t-they friendships with such queer women as Sandra Bernhard, Rosie O’Donnell and Ingrid Casares as well as her promotion of bisexual artists like Meshell Ndegeocello helped to take queer sensibility into the mainstream.”
Missy Elliott was one of the faces of the MAC Viva Glam campaign in 2004, a makeup line launched by MAC Cosmetics to raise funds for people living with HIV/AIDS, a disease which has disproportionately affected the LGBTQ population.
Fans online appear to be ecstatic over the upcoming release.
WE CANNOT WAIT THIS IS ALREADY SO ICONIC
— Dua Lipa Hungary (@dualipahungary) July 27, 2020
you today pic.twitter.com/NrsK9IU0K2
— Brennan Carley (@BrennanCarley) July 27, 2020
Girls coming to end coronavirus and save the world.pic.twitter.com/2DxULYrDLM
— Madonna’s Bitch (@AgentMadameX) July 27, 2020
To prepare for the “Levitating” remix, watch the official lyric video for the album version of the song below.
