wrote "Don't Start Now" with the same team who wrote her 2017 single "
New Rules":
Caroline Ailin,
Emily Warren and
Ian Kirkpatrick.
[1] The song first came about after the
A&R head at Lipa's record label, Joe Kentish, challenged Kirkpatrick in late 2018 to recreate the success of "New Rules".
[2] The first writing session at Warren's home in
Wyoming was unproductive.
[3] Kirkpatrick also worked with producer J Kash, inviting several writers to help find a sound for the track which became a back-and-forth between
1980s and
disco music.
[2] They contemplated emulating music by
Madonna, and created more than 10 reference tracks for Lipa to sample and choose from.
[4] The song was eventually written with Lipa in January 2019.
[2]
The
cowbell used on the track was present on the first
demo and inspired by music by
Two Door Cinema Club. Kirkpatrick based it on Lipa's phrasing in the chorus.
[2] According to him, the strings are a combination of
Kontakt Session Strings, "some weird Nexus 1970s string patch", and live strings.
[3] Although "Don't Start Now"'s bassline sounds live, Kirkpatrick created it with
MIDI. It was influenced by similar basslines used by the
Bee Gees and
Daft Punk that he had listened to growing up.
[5] Kirkpatrick used a Scarbee MM-Bass plug-in for the leading bass sound and played it on a
keyboard before modifying it. He wanted to eschew disco for a more
1990s sound in the pre-chorus by adding
sub-bass combined with thumb
bass guitar and
slaps in the
drop from
Trilian.
[3]
Lipa recorded most of her vocals with a
Shure SM7
microphone. Kirkpatrick said he understood the song better after Lipa sang it and was told by Kentish that the
bridge sounded like an "after-thought". He thus spent a further two weeks completing the track before sending
stems to Josh Gudwin for mixing. To improve the bridge, Kirkpatrick added a "vocal chop", and extra drums inspired by "
Can't Feel My Face" by
The Weeknd. He recalled, "The first version of the drums didn't sound as fat. I was worried that the song would sound too disco, too classic. It needed something new, to make it the perfect mix of old and new." Kirkpatrick had a separate project for the
chord progression before the drop to help him decide which combination of piano and
synths to use. For this section, he went through 25 different sounds and incorporated them into four. His final rough mix included nearly 100 tracks.
[3] Kirkpatrick sent the final version to Lipa when she was attending the
Glastonbury Festival in June 2019.
[6]