DUA LIPA IS POP’S NEW MYSTERIOUS SUPERSTAR
Songs tend toward abstraction instead of personal affairs
When Dua Lipa was 15 years old, she left her parents and two younger siblings behind in the family’s native Kosovo and moved more or less on her own to London.
The plan, at least as understood by her mom and dad (who’d only agreed to it because she’d be rooming with the older daughter of a family friend), was to finish high school and then enter university. By the time Lipa graduated, though, she’d turned her focus to music, posting covers online and recording hooky originals she co-wrote while supporting herself as a hostess at a Mexican joint in London’s Soho neighborhood.
“I kept telling my parents, if I take a gap year, then I don’t have to pay off my university debt,” the singer says with a laugh.
Asked how long she was willing to stretch that gap year — how long she was prepared to grind in the hopes of becoming a pop star — she smiles as though amused by the misconception that she’d been struggling.
“That was a great life — I was working in a restaurant, I was partying all night, then I’d wake up in the morning and go to the studio,” she says. “I had so much fun.”
But a struggle also suggests she might have accepted anything less than success.
“I’ve always been persistent, and I’ve always fought for the things that I’ve wanted,” Lipa, now 25, says. “So as much as this was my passion, I feel like it was also my destiny.”
A decade after she set out from home, it’s tempting to think she was right.
Last year, Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” — a sophomore LP full of sticky vocal melodies, shimmering guitar licks and crazy-funky bass lines — topped the U.K. album chart and was certified gold in the U.S. “Don’t Start Now,” the project’s disco-throwback lead single, has been streamed nearly 2 billion times on Spotify and YouTube.
In November, more than 5 million people tuned into an elaborate, Studio 54-inspired livestream that featured cameos by Elton John, Bad Bunny and Kylie Minogue, the last of whom praised Lipa’s “clever songwriting” and “instantly recognizable voice” in a tribute she wrote when Time magazine put Lipa on its Next 100 list of young influencers.
Lipa says the beautifully rendered “Future Nostalgia” is meant to evoke memories of music by swank ’70s and ’80s acts like Blondie and Chic and to put across a more unified vibe than her grab bag of a self-titled 2017 debut.
Producer Stephen “Koz” Kozmeniuk, who helped build both albums from the ground up, says the singer wanted “Future Nostalgia” to reflect her buoyant mood. “She was happy, feeling good — like, ‘I just wanna dance,’ ” Koz says.
Lipa, of course, didn’t know that COVID-19 was looming as she completed her big feel-good statement in early 2020. But when it came out last March, the album ended up offering a welcome escape from a quickly darkening reality. What’s more, “Don’t Start Now” touched off a plague-times disco revival that yielded pleasure-obsessed hits by the likes of Lady Gaga, Harry Styles and Doja Cat.
If space got crowded under the glitter ball, Lipa still stands out. For starters, there’s the exceptionally wide range of her appeal, which has led to a collaboration with the hip-hop boy band Brockhampton and a country-fied cover of “Don’t Start Now” by Nashville’s Ingrid Andress. (Among Lipa’s other duet partners of late are Miley Cyrus, J Balvin, DaBaby and Andrea Bocelli.)
There’s also Lipa’s unique handling of her celebrity. At a moment when music by many female pop stars is scrutinized for insight into their private lives — be they established A-listers like Swift and Ariana Grande or up-and-comers like Olivia Rodrigo of “Drivers License” fame — Lipa’s songs resist a closely personal read. It’s not that they’re unfeeling; bangers such as “Levitating” and “Hallucinate” combine whooshing grooves with words about bodies in motion to create something downright ecstatic.
But the music tends proudly toward abstraction; it’s seeking to embody the emotional experience of love or adventure, rather than inviting you to ponder any given episode between her and her boyfriend of nearly two years, model Anwar Hadid (younger brother of fashionistas Bella and Gigi). And because she’s such an expressive singer, with loads of texture in her voice, she pulls it off.
“Dua brings a real star quality to her songs,” says Sarah Hudson, a veteran songwriter who’s worked with Katy Perry and Camila Cabello and who wrote
“Levitating” with Lipa, Koz and Clarence Coffee Jr. “But she’s slightly mysterious. At the same time, she’s so genuine that you feel close to the music.”
Lipa cops to a certain self-protective instinct after a few years in the limelight.
“I’ve grown to be more private because so much of my life is public, and I probably censor myself more than I used to,” she says. “I also don’t love the idea of making music for headlines or for controversy.”
Lipa was born in London but moved to Kosovo at 11 when her parents, who’d emigrated during the Balkan conflicts, deemed it safe to come back.
Returning to London as a teenager was a product of her need to “be in a place where everything was happening,” she says, including the club culture she soon discovered.
“Future Nostalgia” showcases Lipa’s earnest embrace of dance music and its rich history; she even released a companion remix album, “Club Future Nostalgia,” with new versions of the songs by house and techno O.G.s such as Moodymann, Larry Heard and Masters at Work.
“Her investment is totally legit,” says the Blessed Madonna, the respected DJ and producer who oversaw the remix set. “To me Dua is the pop girl who really gets it.”
The Blessed Madonna worked with Lipa again on last fall’s splashy livestream, which they called “Studio 2054.” For the singer, it was a place to pour all the energy and ideas — and all the costumes and choreography — she had for the “Future Nostalgia” tour, which has been postponed twice due to the pandemic but she hopes finally to launch later this year.