How Dua Lipa Stormed the Top of the Charts; Last year the pop star had one of the most-streamed songs on the planet. Now she's launching a podcast and newsletter—and, at long last, going on tour for 'Future Nostalgia.'

 

We all remember what March 2020 was like.

 

In the midst of the confusion and panic that reigned as Covid-19 started shutting down the world, Dua Lipa had to make a decision. Her second album, Future Nostalgia, was set for release in early April. The stakes were high. She had won the 2019 Grammy for best new artist following the success of her 2017 self-titled debut, which included the global smash "New Rules." The new record—more ambitious, blending disco and '90s dance influences with modern pop songcraft—was poised to take her to the next level of stardom.

 

But what would it mean to release Future Nostalgia at such a dark moment? Would anyone want to listen to an upbeat album? What would happen to her career if she were unable to tour?

 

"I always have this viewpoint that you have to be outside of your comfort zone for things to be rewarding," Lipa said on a recent snowy morning in Manhattan. "So when the pandemic happened, and everyone was worried about whether we should release the album, I was just like, F— it, maybe it's just what we need. While everyone's at home, maybe this is the album we should be putting out. It was scary, because you had no idea how long we were going to be in this pandemic. Everything was a big question mark. But I had a sense that we just had to do it."

 

While most artists were scrambling to delay albums, music from Future Nostalgia leaked, and Lipa decided to move the release date up a week, to March 27. And then, with tour plans indefinitely postponed, she got to work.

 

Unable to perform in front of a real audience, she did everything she could to remain a constant presence in her fans' lives. She put out a steady stream of singles—then remixes and videos for each song, plus updated versions of the album. She did TV appearances from home, including as a guest host for Jimmy Kimmel Live, and assembled an elaborate livestream concert that drew an estimated five million views.

 

"Nothing was planned," she says. "It was all like, Let's try this out—why not? The idea that people were liking the album was the extra driving force for me to create new things and work harder and try to give them more experiences."

 

The result was that Dua Lipa became one of the biggest breakout stars of lockdown. Future Nostalgia became 2021's second-most-streamed album on Spotify and was nominated for the album of the year Grammy. More than 90 weeks after its release, it was still making an appearance in Billboard's Top 20. The single "Levitating" was Billboard's No. 1 song of 2021—bought, streamed and played on the radio more than any other song in the U.S.

 

Along the way, her presence on social media (her nearly 80 million followers on Instagram rank her among the biggest accounts in the world) made her a focus of tabloid fascination—over her alleged relationship with model Anwar Hadid (younger brother of Gigi and Bella), which dates back to 2019 and reportedly came to an end last month. Her posts also turned her into a style icon. Lipa has collaborated with Puma, and she's part of a campaign for a Yves Saint Laurent fragrance. She was also the face of Versace's fall/winter 2021 campaign, culminating in an appearance on the runway in Milan the following season.

 

"Of course, no one can deny that she is a beautiful woman," says Donatella Versace, already known as an anointer of pop stars (J.Lo, Lady Gaga) before enlisting Lipa. "However, her voice has something so unique to it, and the way she looks you in the eye, with that mixture of wonder and confidence, made me understand that she is a true Versace woman. One who fights for her ideas, who is supportive of other women and wants to succeed."

 

"When we collaborated, I was blown away by how professional she was," says Elton John, whose duet with Lipa, "Cold Heart," went to No. 1 in the U.K. and is his first Top 10 hit in the U.S. in more than 20 years. "She turned up so well prepared and was a joy to sing with. Her musical chops are substantial. She has so much presence—an elegant poise and sophistication that belies her youth."

 

Lipa has worked with an unusual mix of other musicians in a short time, from rapper Pop Smoke and Andrea Bocelli to Miley Cyrus and the K-Pop group Blackpink. Her club smash "One Kiss" with Calvin Harris won the 2019 Brit Award for British single of the year, and "Electricity," with Silk City (Diplo and Mark Ronson), won the 2019 Grammy for best dance recording. The Club Future Nostalgia remix album included contributions from Lipa's childhood idols Madonna, Missy Elliott and Gwen Stefani.

 

One day before she begins full-scale rehearsals for the long-delayed Future Nostalgia tour, scheduled to start in Miami February 9 and run through November, Lipa looks striking in a long, pale pink puffy coat and bright-pink marshmallow-style boots, with wisps of hair sticking out from underneath a white knit cap. At 26, she also still looks like a kid. Although she's thrilled to finally get back on stage, she's especially eager to talk about her latest media venture, a newsletter and companion podcast launching next week.

 

"Since I was really young, I've always kept lists," she says. "My parents found it really funny, because they would find them all over the house, but it's something that I've done religiously—I try a new restaurant, I write it down. Movies I want to watch, books I want to read, places I want to see, drinks, recipes, everything. So all my friends send me messages like, 'I'm in Mexico City; what can I do?' And I'd say, 'Oh, this, this, this, you have to see this.'"

 

Inspired by this personal-recommendation engine, the newsletter, Service95 , will also focus on new musicians, artists and designers and feature updates from around the world. "I've got journalists from Russia, from Hong Kong, from Nigeria," she says. "Once we move from newsletter to website, everything will be searchable, so wherever you are, you can find information about new music that's happening or new things to go and see and do."

 

Lipa will also host a new podcast called At Your Service. The first season will have a dozen episodes, with a tentative lineup that includes writer Lisa Taddeo, British Vogue editor in chief Edward Enninful, Russell Brand and musicians like K-pop superstar CL and Elton John. She seems most excited by the opportunity to spotlight social issues, such as an interview with Iraqi human rights activist Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who was held captive by the Islamic State and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. "She's been through a very emotional, tragic, frightening journey," says Lipa. "It's impressive to see somebody still continue doing the real work to help her people. So I'm excited to help her get her story out there."

 

Lipa sees a connection between her interest in such narratives and her work as a songwriter. "I think it's a lot about sharing experiences," she says. "When I make music, a lot of the time it's very personal experiences, but in the hopes that other people will listen and have it resonate with them. The same goes for Service95—that idea of togetherness."

 

Ben Mawson, who has been Lipa's manager since she was 17, says the media play is a passion project for his client, but he also sees a business opportunity, noting that subscriptions are "in the high six figures" ahead of launch and that Service95 is now Lipa's trademarked brand. "It may get bigger in a lot of ways," he says, "and the natural evolution will be doing things as Service95 in addition to doing things as Dua. It will evolve, and I'm sure there will be commercial deals."

 

Although the newsletter and podcast, unveiled less than a week before she heads out on a tour she's been waiting on for two years, will constitute "another full-time job," Lipa shrugs that off. "It's just something that's ingrained in me," she says. "I don't know what it is, but I feel like at any point the rug could be pulled from under my feet if I don't work hard enough."

 

Dua's father, Dukagjin Lipa, was a singer in a rock group in his native Kosovo. But as tensions mounted in the Balkans during the '90s, he and Dua's mother, Anesa, moved to London, where she was born. Growing up, she absorbed the music of her dad's favorite artists—Radiohead, Paul Weller, the Doors, Sting—while obsessing over the pop she heard on the radio.

 

She attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School (notable alumni include Amy Winehouse and Emma "Baby Spice" Bunton) until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo. By then the war had ended, and the country went on to declare independence from Serbia in 2008. Encouraged by a teacher in Kosovo, who had her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began taking her playground dream of singing more seriously and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15.

 

Living with friends, she made it through high school but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance. Too embarrassed to tell her friends, Lipa said she found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As and was accepted at four universities.

 

Instead of staying in school she started working at a London restaurant while recording covers and posting them on social media. While trying to find her way into the music business, she took on additional modeling work, including an appearance in a commercial for The X Factor. After this drew the attention of someone on Mawson's team (who were working with the American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey), she quit her restaurant job.

 

"She certainly wasn't fully formed as an artist," says Mawson. "She did have a very good voice, but the songs weren't really there. But she mentioned Madonna as a person to emulate, and I thought that was my type of ambition."

 

It took a while to hit her stride; her first few singles did OK in Europe, but nothing really clicked until the skittery, defiant "New Rules" exploded in the summer of 2017. The song's video reached one billion views on YouTube, and the Dua Lipa album eventually passed five million sales worldwide.

 

Lipa has retained a strong connection to her Kosovar heritage, organizing a festival (which has featured such artists as Miley Cyrus and Calvin Harris) to raise money for local charities. The effort was recognized with a key to the capital city of Pristina. Her outspoken posts on Kosovar independence, which remains a contentious issue, have faced criticism, as have her pro-Palestinian statements. The pushback hasn't made her apprehensive about addressing political issues. "It's such a big part of who I am," she says. "Given my parents and how they came to the U.K., [the refugee situation] has always been something that's really close to my heart.

 

"I read a lot of comments from people telling me that I don't have a country, I don't have an identity, Kosovo doesn't exist. I lived in Kosovo, I know the lives that were lost. So for somebody to deny me my identity and my experience, it's hard for me to stand back and not speak up about it. So that's something that I will always do."

 

Last November, she was honored in Washington, D.C., by the Atlantic Council, an international affairs think tank, for her commitment to "empowering the next generation of Balkan leaders and musicians." She's seized other opportunities to speak out, such as her acceptance speech at 2019's Grammy ceremony, when she responded to then Grammy chief Neil Portnow's comment that women needed to "step up" if they wanted to win more awards. In 2019, she delivered a speech at Cambridge University's prestigious Cambridge Union, during which she presented a five-point plan for the music industry to address gender inequality that called for such measures as setting inclusionary goals and diversity audits as well as encouraging girls to play "traditionally masculine instruments" in school.

 

When I first met Lipa in 2016, she spoke with disdain about her teenage modeling experiences. "It made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues," she said at the time, "a lot of body confidence problems." Walking in the Versace show last fall gave her a new perspective. "Times have changed so much that you see beautiful models of all sizes, of all races, of different genders," she says. "It's amazing to have that now be the beauty spectrum when it was so limited before. Fashion is evolving so quickly, people are really being accountable and taking a stand for things that they believe in. And I love that I was a part of it now, in this time of change."

 

Donatella Versace—who calls Lipa's style "effortless, yet always cool"—says the show was further evidence of the singer's work ethic. "Walking down a catwalk is not as simple as it looks if you are not used to it, and if everyone behind you has walked hundreds of them," she says. "[Dua] gave me yet another glimpse into her work ethic. The way she owned that moment is just another example of her talent and, in fact, we can safely say she killed it with that wink in front of the photographers."

 

This year Lipa will also make her film debut, when she appears alongside John Cena, Bryan Cranston, Samuel L. Jackson and Sam Rockwell in the upcoming spy movie Argylle. Director Matthew Vaughn (the Kingsmen series, one of the X-Men films, Kick-Ass) took note of Lipa during an appearance on the Graham Norton Show, on which she wore a dazzling Valentino sequined silver cape gown. "I've been around a lot of very famous people, and I think fame is becoming a non-commodity," he says. "Andy Warhol was right; everyone's becoming famous for doing nothing. And when I saw that interview, I thought, this girl's got it."

 

Vaughn will reveal only that Lipa's character plays "a pivotal role at a pivotal moment," adding that on set "she was very attentive, inquisitive and focused. She zoned in and listened. If I gave her notes, she took them, understood them and delivered."

 

Lipa says that working on Argylle was a little terrifying. "Everybody was saying 'Oh, isn't this so similar to making a music video?' but it's not at all," she says. "In a music video, you really play to the camera, whereas in film, you have to forget the camera and get into character."

 

Lipa's celebrity received an added boost, for better or worse, when she reportedly became involved with Anwar Hadid and their every public appearance (along with plenty of private ones) was splashed across social media, with speculation regarding their apparent breakup reaching a fever pitch in December. (Through a representative, Lipa declined to comment.) She maintains that her off-stage life, despite the constant spotlight, really does remain private. For that she's grateful.

 

"Something that I've realized over time is how little people actually know," she says. "I've made peace with the fact that people can think what they want to think, but no one really, truly knows what's happening behind closed doors. My circle's really tight, my family and my friends keep me so grounded, and it gives me some kind of comfort that not everything is out there that would take away from your life and privacy."

 

Lipa is currently deep into making her next album. "I've done a big chunk of writing: It's starting to take shape; I've got a lot of it recorded," she says. "It has a vision. It has a name, I think—for now. It's just been fun experimenting. I'm always going to make pop music, but it has its own unique sound, which is exciting and something that feels like a movement from Future Nostalgia. It's still in baby form, so we'll see as it progresses.

 

"In all honesty, it's probably not what my fans want to hear, but I'm in no rush," she says before heading off for a photo shoot. She has a tour to rehearse for and podcasts to record. It's time for Dua Lipa to get back to work.

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dua-lipa-inter...ter-11643117322

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