"This is a song that I always always go back to, it’s one of my favourites ever.” Watch pop superstar Dua Lipa cover a classic INXS anthem, live in Sydney

(Image credit: Don Arnold/Getty Images)

Dua Lipa has maintained her promise to cover a song by a local artist in every city that her current Radical Optimism tour stops in, by performing her take on INXS classic Never Tear Us Apart at the Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney, Australia, on March 26.

Lipa kicked off her current world tour at Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena on March 17, and making her pledge to honour local heroes, the 29-year-old pop star and her band performed AC/DC's Highway To Hell.

"Australia has an abundance of amazing musicians," she told the crowd. "So we just thought we’d go really, really big from the very beginning."

At subsequent shows she has performed Torn, famously covered by Sydney-born actress/singer Natalia Imbruglia in 1997, Kylie Minogue's Can't Get You Out Of My Head, Troye Sivan's Rush, and Vance Joy's Riptide.

“Every time I think back to these songs, they’re also so ingrained in British culture and it just brings us closer together, even though we’re on opposite sides of the world.” Lipa told the crowd at the Qudos Bank Arena. “It feels really special. This is a song that I always always go back to, it’s one I love, one of my favourites ever.”

Watch her performance below:

Dua Lipa - Never Tear Us Apart [INXS Cover] (Live at Radical Optimism Tour in Sydney) 26/3/25 - YouTube

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In 2023, speaking about Radical Optimism, Lupa described it as “a psychedelic-pop-infused tribute to UK rave culture”, and said that it was partially inspired by Massive Attack, Primal Scream, and the “don’t give a fuck-ness” of Britpop artists Oasis and Blur.

“This record feels a bit more raw,” she told Rolling Stone UK. “I want to capture the essence of youth and freedom and having fun and just letting things happen, whether it’s good or bad. You can’t change it. You just have to roll with the punches of whatever’s happening in your life.”

Tame Impala's Kevin Parker helped produce the record, and subsequently described Lipa as an "absolute weapon".

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.