HOW DUA LIPA BECAME THE MOST STREAMED WOMAN OF 2017
Voici comment Dua Lipa est devenue la femme la plus streamée en 2017
En quelques mois, Dua Lipa a mis le monde de la musique à ses pieds. Son tube New Rules a été sacré « chanson de l’année 2017 » par le magazine Time et cumule aujourd’hui plus de 800 millions de vues sur Youtube. A 22 ans, la chanteuse Londonienne porte un message féministe dans l’air du temps… Itinéraire d’une pop star.
She’s officially bigger than Ariana Grande and Rihanna, not to mention Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. The upstart British pop star Dua Lipa has just been named the most streamed woman of 2017 in the UK, according to Spotify’s year-end figures, an achievement that makes her No 1 song “New Rules” seem very aptly named. Young female
solo artists have struggled to break through recently but Lipa, at the age of 22, is already being seen as an authentic voice of young British womanhood: independent, cool and in command of her own sexuality.
TEEN YEARS IN KOSOVO
2.Lipa was raised in the UK, but at 13 moved with her Albanian parents to their former home of Kosovo. Two years later, she returned to London alone to pursue music, and started posting covers online. She signed to Warner Bros and her original songs quickly made an impact. Coy debut single “Be the One” reached No 9 two years ago, kickstarting a string of gold and platinum hits that culminated in three simultaneous top 15 tracks this February. “It made her look like the most in-demand singer of the moment,” says chart expert James Masterton. “It’s no coincidence that her next release turned out to be her biggest.” Lipa then released “New Rules” this July as the fifth taste of her self-titled solo debut and, like the singer, the song had a slow climb to the top spot.
EMPOWERING YOUNG WOMEN
3.Lipa has always spoken boldly about feminism and the importance of elevating her young female fans, views that have trickled into her work. And “New Rules” is her anthem, offering an action plan for anyone tempted to rekindle things with a dodgy ex. It culminates in the fairly conclusive line: “If
you’re under him, you ain’t getting over him.” The video furthered the idea of female solidarity: taking cues from Beyoncé’s “Formation”, a dressing gown-clad squad yanked phones from any girl about to text: “u up?”
4.The package felt elegant and uncontrived – and became a viral smash. To date, the video has had 749m views, ranking among YouTube’s top UK trending videos for 2017. Before streaming stats contributed to the charts, singles used to peak then drop. Now they largely start low and peak later, making it harder to engineer a genuine song of the summer – call it pop’s global warming. But “New Rules” did it. Footage of Glastonbury’s crowd singing every word of “Be the One” also went viral.
PLAYING THE LONG GAME
5.Pop albums can often feel like an afterthought, and the fact that Lipa’s debut was delayed three times seemed a bad sign. Yet sales remain consistent reaching 1.2m worldwide, an unusually high figure today, and still going strong.
6.Lipa’s success is a lesson in the importance of nurturing talent instead of unceremoniously dropping an act after one flop. “Labels have quickly learned how to play the long game again, in a manner that possibly hasn’t been seen since the 1980s,” says James Masterton. “It’s a potential consequence of ever-tighter margins. Managers are on less of a hair-trigger to write off an investment, which is to everyone’s benefit.”
7.Elspeth Merry, publicist at Island for burgeoning Norwegian pop star Sigrid, says it’s important to let a campaign develop organically. “It’s an exciting time – because streaming does allow for longevity, as long as the artist is prolific and releasing music more frequently than in a traditional campaign.”
8.Speaking of which, 2018 will bring a seventh single from Lipa’s debut, the booming “IDGAF”, which is possibly even more strident than “New Rules”. But as the campaign squeezes out every viable drop of success, isn’t there the danger of her getting itchy feet? “It’s never been a problem motivating Dua,” insists her manager Ben Mawson. “She’s very happy with her success, but very keen to build on it in 2018.”
9.And the impact of the groundwork she’s laying can’t be overstated. If it’s taken two years for Lipa to get here, her female peers steaming up pop’s glass ceiling may have yet to reach their peak. Even new rules are made to be broken.
Lipa has always spoken boldly about feminism and the importance of elevating her young female fans.