Pretty Please (song)

"Pretty Please" is a song by English singer Dua Lipa from her second studio album, Future Nostalgia, released on 27 March 2020.

The song was written by Lipa alongside Julia Michaels, Caroline Ailin and the sole producer Ian Kirkpatrick.

"Pretty Please" was written by Dua Lipa, Julia Michaels, Caroline Ailin and Ian Kirkpatrick.

Josh Gudwin mixed the song at Henson Studios in Hollywood and Chris Gehringer mastered it at Sterling Sound in Edgewater, New Jersey.

Kirkpatrick included big whoops in the song as space fillers; he faded the ends to make them sound tight.

Towards the end of the session, the collaborators discussed writing a middle eight but decided to have Kirkpatrick make one; he described what he made as "a bunch of shit" and him "trying to be Charlie Puth".

[4] In the section, Kirpatrick included a part from Lipa's 2017 single "New Rules", which he himself produced, where she sings "I gotta tell them to myself"; however, that was re-pitched in melodyne.

[19] Bright synthesizer flashes occasionally appear, that change the song from 1970s-styled disco to late 1990s and early 2000s-styled dance-pop.

[30] The song additionally sees Lipa in an emotionally tense moment with her lover, pleading for him to stay as he slows down the whirring of her mind and for stress-relieving sex from him.

[13][22][24] "Pretty Please" was released through Warner Records on 27 March 2020 as the sixth track on Lipa's second studio album Future Nostalgia.

[38][39] Lipa performed an acoustic rendition of "Pretty Please" at the virtual FIFA 21 world premiere on 1 October 2020.

[47] A video of Lipa performing the song at the 2022 Lovestream Festival in Bratislava went viral on social media in June 2022.

[49] In The Wall Street Journal, Mark Richardson compared the song's "seductive airiness" to Prince's music, finding similarities in the use of space, the content of the lyrics as well as the "brilliantly hypnotic pulse".

[51] Writing for Idolator, Mike Nied complimented the song for being "lusty and exceedingly relatable" while also praising the use of a cowbell saying it only makes things better.

[20] He also mentioned that the "controlled chaos" of the middle eight elevates the song from "a snappy but muted deep cut to stadium potential".

[52] In Under the Radar, Conrad Duncan compared it to the "slick pop-funk which appears every week on Spotify's New Music Friday playlist" while also complimenting the groove that "snaps and tugs in pleasing directions".

[53] For Pitchfork Anna Gaca noted that "Pretty Please" is the closest Future Nostalgia comes to being a "vulnerable or revealing" ballad.

[13] Vulture's Craig Jenkins called it a "flurr[y] of pick up lines" that Lipa "knocks out of the park" with her vocal delivery.

's Brad Garcia named the song "smooth grooving" while Maura Johnston in Entertainment Weekly called it "skeletal".