What the song is about
"Training Season" is a list of requirements. In the first verse Lipa sizes up a new prospect and is sceptical — she wants someone who can support her, take charge when she is vulnerable and hold a real conversation — and she asks outright whether he is up to it. Then the hook delivers the verdict: training season's over. She is not going to spend another relationship coaching someone into being a decent partner.
The second verse is sharper. She looks back on how generously she treated people who had not earned it, and says she is holding out for someone who hits her like an arrow. In the bridge the questions get specific: will he take the initiative himself, or will someone have to prompt him?
Lipa has explained that the title has a double meaning. It is a message to men — she is done training them — and it is also about herself: the lessons of those relationships have been learned, and her own growth is complete. Critics compared its self-possession to her 2017 hit "New Rules", which was also a rulebook for dealing with men, only written from the other side of the lesson.
How it came to be made
The song has a precise origin. Lipa had been on a run of unimpressive dates and considered one of them "the final straw". The next morning, in November 2022, she walked into the studio with Caroline Ailin and Tobias Jesso Jr. and declared that "training season is over". They wrote the song that day.
The music came from Danny L Harle and Kevin Parker — the man who is Tame Impala. Lipa had met Parker in July 2022 and brought him into sessions with Ailin, Harle and Jesso Jr. in London; that team wrote eight of the eleven songs on Radical Optimism. Five more writers — Martina Sorbara, Nicholas Gale, Shaun Frank, Yaakov Gruzman and Steve Mastroianni — are credited because the song interpolates a composition called "Tokyo Nights".
Lipa premiered it at the Grammy Awards on 4 February 2024, opening the show on a giant rotating jungle gym, and Warner released it eleven days later as the second single from Radical Optimism, after "Houdini". It was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2025 Brit Awards.
What it did on the charts
In 2024 it debuted at No. 4 in the UK — Lipa's fifteenth top-ten single — and at No. 27 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It reached No. 6 on the Billboard Global 200, the top ten in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands and New Zealand, and No. 1 on airplay charts in Latvia, Lithuania, Turkey and the CIS. It is Diamond in Brazil and France and Platinum in the UK.
Then, in late summer 2026, it came back. After going viral on social media, it re-entered the UK chart at No. 53 on 28 August 2026, jumped to No. 18 the following week, and then climbed eleven more places to No. 7 on the chart of 11 September — back in the top ten more than two years after release. The same day it re-entered, Lipa put out Training Season's Over, an EP of live versions of the song.
A detail worth noticing in that same top ten: at No. 10 was Tame Impala's "Loser". Kevin Parker produced this record, so that week he had two songs in the UK top ten, one as producer and one as artist.
How it is put together
It is a disco-pop song with a strong Eurodisco accent, 3:29 long. Parker produced, engineered and played almost everything — bass, drums, guitar, keyboards and percussion — and it has more of his fingerprints than a typical pop single: live drums, syncopated guitars, girl-group harmonies and a slightly psychedelic sheen that Clash described as adding "some trippy, Tame Impala aspects" to her glossy pop.
Several critics heard ABBA in it: the piano line recalls "Dancing Queen", and the Middle Eastern-flavoured melody echoes "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" and "Voulez-Vous". Variety called it "the best kind of tribute: nothing overt, but a sly, fun wink for fans who notice it".
The music video
Vincent Haycock directed the video. Lipa sits in a café drinking coffee while listening to voicemails from former partners, each apologising and asking for a second chance. Every man in the room is trying to get her attention; she stays unmoved, thinking about what she actually wants, while the room starts to spin and falls apart around her. It passed a million views in its first twelve hours.
Directed by Vincent Haycock — released 15 February 2024.