In Dua Lipa's ever-expanding world, 'there's no time limit and there's no what-ifs'
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T START NOW")
DUA LIPA: (Singing) So if you don't...
I'm weirdly, freakishly organized with my calendar - like, everything's down to the hour.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T START NOW")
DUA LIPA: (Singing) If you wanna believe...
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Which makes sense if you're an international pop star, and that is indeed what Dua Lipa has become.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T START NOW")
DUA LIPA: (Singing) Don't show up. Don't come out. Don't start caring about me now.
MARTIN: Although after spending an hour with her, you sort of feel like you've just had a session with your super successful life coach.
DUA LIPA: If it's something that I love and something that I'm passionate about, I can do anything. I think so many people are just like - you can do anything. As long as you compartmentalize and you plan and you know what you want...
MARTIN: Dream it, and you can be it. Yes, it's the stuff of greeting cards and refrigerator magnets. But in Dua Lipa's case, it's actually true. The 26-year-old is one of the biggest artists in the business right now. Her album, "Future Nostalgia," won a Grammy for best pop vocal album last year and was the second-biggest download of the year on Spotify. She released it early in 2020, and it became the soundtrack to many a kitchen dance party during COVID lockdowns, but the pandemic meant she had to delay her tour. Now, two years later, she is on the road performing her pop anthems in sold-out arenas around the world.
DUA LIPA: Wow. It just feels so surreal that we're all just back in the room and doing this in such close proximity with other people - that we haven't been able to do in a very long time.
MARTIN: I talked to Dua on Zoom from Glasgow, Scotland, where she was getting ready to perform, but we had actually met in person a few weeks earlier at her show here in Washington, D.C. Afterwards, I was whisked away for a quick meet-and-greet, and her dad popped in to tell her how great a job she had done and to give her a kiss on the cheek. At the time, Dua was wearing designer sweats, but just a few moments earlier she had been floating above the crowd on a levitating stage wearing a black catsuit. Her dad told me he pinches himself when he thinks about how far she's come.
He's a musician - right? - your dad?
DUA LIPA: Yeah.
MARTIN: Or he was.
DUA LIPA: He was. He was in a rock group in Kosovo. In '92, they moved to Kosovo as, like, the war in Bosnia was happening. My mum's half Bosnian, so her mum was in Sarajevo at the time. But they moved to London as, like, the situation started getting really difficult in ex-Yugoslavia. And, yeah, I guess something that people, like, forget all the time is people don't really want to leave their country unless they really have to.
MARTIN: Years after the war, when Dua was about 11, about to start middle school, her parents moved her and the rest of her family back to Kosovo.
But when you were 15, you told your parents you wanted to leave.
DUA LIPA: Yeah.
MARTIN: You told them that you wanted to move back to London...
DUA LIPA: (Laughter).
MARTIN: ...With or without them.
DUA LIPA: Yeah. That was...
MARTIN: Tell me about that. Was it one conversation?
DUA LIPA: You know, I really missed being in a place where I felt like anything was possible. When I was living in Kosovo from the age of 11 to 15, I loved, loved doing music, but I just felt like there was no way that I could really cut through all the noise without being in a place where everything was happening.
MARTIN: Dua Lipa's story has captured the imagination of more than one aspiring singer because of the fairy-tale nature of it all. Unlike some of her contemporaries, she didn't come up through the Disney juggernaut or another industry pipeline. She did it by writing songs, sometimes posting videos on YouTube and her own force of will. Here she is when she was young, doing a cover of Destiny's Child.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DUA LIPA: (Singing) Say my name, say my name. If no one is around you, say baby I love you if you ain't running games.
MARTIN: Dua Lipa has hit some snags. There was a social media kerfuffle a few years ago when a video of a lackluster dance performance went viral. And more seriously, she's facing a couple lawsuits over copyright infringement. Her team wouldn't let her comment on that when I asked, but Dua Lipa seems to be taking it all in stride, and now her calendar is filled not just with concert dates, but tapings for her own podcast.
Which, I'm going to be honest, is a little annoying...
DUA LIPA: (Laughter).
MARTIN: ...Because you're good at everything else, Dua. Now, you're coming for my job (laughter).
DUA LIPA: No. I think, honestly, Rachel, I think there's room for all of us, and it's very different.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
DUA LIPA: It's very different.
MARTIN: It's very true.
DUA LIPA: The podcast journey has been interesting, and it's been something that I've been quite nervous about.
MARTIN: Which is interesting because, again, this is a person who moved back to London on her own when she was 15 years old to become a pop star, so she has got confidence to spare. But this podcast and her newsletter, Service95, show Dua in a new light - talking about things she doesn't sing about, like a conversation she had with Nadia Murad, a Yazidi woman who was abducted and raped by ISIS, or a conversation with Elton John, with whom she collaborated on the hit single, "Cold Heart."
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "DUA LIPA: AT YOUR SERVICE")
DUA LIPA: How are you doing?
ELTON JOHN: Hi, gorgeous.
DUA LIPA: Thank you so much for doing this.
MARTIN: A conversation that went to some unexpectedly serious places.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "DUA LIPA: AT YOUR SERVICE")
JOHN: My soul was void of anything to believe in. All I believed in was my career, drugs, alcohol, sex, and I didn't put any credence into having a belief of anything. And then, I...
MARTIN: Is it satisfying your curiosity in a different way that - than music does - like, giving you something else?
DUA LIPA: I want to say yes, but I also feel like both the music and the podcast - they're different parts of who I am, but they just make up me. I've always seen myself - in whatever area of my profession - as being of service. I feel like social media, especially now - there's such an influx of so much information, and I feel like sometimes it's really hard to grasp, like, things that really interest you, things that you want to know about, things that you should be supporting. And that was kind of where I started getting a little bit foggy in terms of, like, the activism side was - if you claim to be an activist or somebody who wants to speak up about any injustices, then you have to speak up about everything, and you have to do it imminently and immediately. And if you don't, you're not supporting and you're not doing enough.
MARTIN: Did you feel that? Did you feel that pressure?
DUA LIPA: Well, I feel like that's just the air of social media at the moment, you know? And I want to be able to give people the tools to be able to make their mind up for themselves.
MARTIN: I asked what advice she gets from other artists about pitfalls to avoid in a long music career.
DUA LIPA: I haven't actually had that kind of conversation at all. But I feel like everybody's journey is so unique, and I think whatever path that you're on, on somebody else's, you know, mistakes - I think everything's a learning curve, and we're all, you know, human. We have to go through those experiences ourselves.
MARTIN: And then it's clear why she doesn't ask for advice - Dua Lipa has gotten by as her own life coach. And so far, she's not just winning. She is flying.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LEVITATING")
DUA LIPA: (Singing) You want me. I want you, baby. My sugarboo. I'm levitating. The Milky Way, we're renegading. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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