“Houdini” is the first single from Dua Lipa’s third studio album Radical Optimism. The track kickstarted Dua’s new era and was first alluded to on 27 October 2023 — after deleting all of her Instagram posts, Dua posted a cryptic teaser on social media of her mouth holding a small golden key between her teeth, paired with the caption “catch me or I go…”

The post was deleted two days later and the singer shared a new video instead of it. It portrayed Dua with the key now inside of her mouth with the caption “I’m not here for long.” It provided the first glimpse at the song’s sound, with a snippet of the song playing in the background. On 31 October, the teaser was also deleted and yet another teaser video with a snippet was posted. The last frames of the video showed the numbers “4 8 9 9 14 15 21.” Soon enough, fans figured out the numbers converted to the alphabet letters “D H I I N O U,” which when rearranged spelled out the song’s title. This was later confirmed by the official Dua Lipa Fan Account, TeamDuaHQ.

The song’s release date marks the anniversary of Harry Houdini’s death, the famous illusionist noted for his escape acts. Another allusion to Houdini’s escape acts is the key seen in Dua’s mouth in all of the teasers, as the magician’s wife would frequently give him the key to his handcuffs through a kiss.

On 8 November, less than 48 hours before the single’s release, Dua went to BBC where she and Greg James chose one random passerby to be the track’s first listener. The following day, on the single’s release date, 300 lucky fans were invited to an early screening of the song’s music video alongside Dua herself, two hours before the world premiere.