Hotter than all the rest

Dua is celebrating becoming the most streamed female artist in the UK in 2018

’I wrote my first song at three or four. My parents still sing it to me at family parties...’

She once boasted she was Hotter Than Hell – and in 2018 Dua Lipa proved it. For not only did she dominate the Brit Awards, but she was also named the year’s most streamed female artist in the UK.

Yet Dua Lipa’s phenomenal success story actually started a lot earlier than many think – she wrote her very first song when she was just an infant.

The Londoner’s family were so impressed, they even still sing it to her now.

Dua, 23, laughs: “My dad says that I wrote my first song when I was about three or four.

“It was more like a funny song that I would sing to my mum where I would go ‘When I grow up, can I wear your dress? Can I wear your shoes?’

“And they still sing it back to me at family parties, which is always quite embarrassing.”

Despite showing talent at such an early age, it was actually when she was studying for her GCSES that Dua began to take her skills seriously after she started turning her diary into song lyrics and began performing on Youtube.

Less than a decade later, Dua, whose parents came to the UK from Kosovo in 1992, has had a platinum album, two UK number ones, a song (High) on the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack and performed at the UEFA Champions League final.

Then last month it was announced she had beaten Ariana Grande to become the most streamed female in the UK on Spotify and Apple music for the second year running.

Her debut album came fourth in the global streaming charts with more than five billion listens, and now she’ll be using her diary again when she returns to the studio to continue working on her allimportant second album after her New Year holiday.

“I was always keeping a diary or writing my thoughts in the forms of poems or essays,” Dua says. “That is still how it is, how I write to this day – I take those notes and I go to the studio.

“I read back the notes and if I still feel like they are relevant to me today then I will write a song about it.”

The One Kiss star has also used her relationships in her music, hinting that either singer Paul Klein or model and chef Isaac Carew have been a previous inspiration. She believes it’s definitely better than counselling.

“No Goodbyes was very much my present relationship status at the time,” she says. “It felt quite difficult to write something that felt so fresh. I was figuring it out in my head while I was writing at the same time. I don’t do therapy but going to the studio is my therapy. I feel like I have learned a lot about myself.”

Now she just has to hope she can repeat her success in 2019.

“It has been magical and crazy at the same time but I have grown more confident, especially in myself,” she says.