“If I could play bass like that, I would!”: Dua Lipa producer on Don’t Start Now basslineIan Kirkpatrick, the producer of Dua Lipa’s 2019 hit song Don’t Start Now, has dived into the making of the track’s iconic funky bassline.
“The bassline is a little Bee Gees and a little Daft Punk,” Kirkpatrick told Music Week [via Music Radar]. “It’s a little bit Alan Braxe and Fred Falke, if anyone knows those DJs – those old Eurohouse kind of classy basslines.”

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“It was the sum of me listening to awesome basslines for 10 years and trying to emulate that, so I’m glad people like it.”
Since its release, the song has spawned countless bass covers, with the most popular racking up an impressive 14 million views on YouTube. But did you know that no bass guitars were actually involved in the original track?
“It’s MIDI, don’t get mad at me!” Kirkpatrick said. “But it’s programmed responsibly, so people can actually play it. It’s meant to sound real and it might as well be. If I could play bass like that, I would!”

Elsewhere, the producer also spoke about how Don’t Start Now — written by Emily Warren, Caroline Ailin, Kirkpatrick, and Dua Lipa herself — was conceived during a songwriting session in Warren’s Wyoming cabin.
“The lyrical concept started in January and the vibe came from the night before,” Kirkpatrick recalled. “We’d gone out to this random bar in the middle of Jackson Hole and it was disco night, and Don’t Start Now came the next day.”
Kirkpatrick previously revealed during a Sound on Sound interview that he used the Scarbee MM-Bass plugin for the song’s main bass sound.
“I played the main part on the keyboard, and then edited it afterwards. There’s a sub bass underneath it, and it’s blended with slaps in the drop, which is from a [Spectrasonics] Trilian bass patch, plus there’s a thumb bass,” he said.

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