Dua Lipa

Of Albanian heritage, Dua Lipa was born in London, and at age 11 her parents moved her back to their birthplace of Kosovo.

Dua’s parents had only left Kosovo when the war in Sarajevo started, and since her maternal grandmother is from Bosnia, their family was put at the center of a lot of conflict and they felt it best to transplant to London to finish their studies. When the family moved back to Kosovo, it was at a time when many Western artists were playing in the country; the first concert Dua attended was a Method Man & Redman show when she was 13, and her second was a 50 Cent show. Her father, Dukagjin, was a musician himself (the lead singer for a renowned Kosovan rock band called Oda) and was involved with producing shows through his work for a telecom agency.

Although his band was well known, the Kosovan music industry wasn’t like anything in the UK or the USA, and he didn’t have an option to pursue music as a career.

When Dua was 15 she moved back to London, where she lived with a friend’s family to dedicate herself to being a musician on a global scale. She studied full time, splitting her regular schooling with studying part time at Sylvia Young Theatre School. She spent time posting covers online and making impactful steps on social media. After her A-levels she took a year to really hone in on her music career and eventually connected with her manager as a result. It was then that she began to go into the studio five days a week, although there were times where the vibe of the session wasn’t really fitting with what she wanted to create. After the fabrication of “Hotter Than Hell” she went into sessions idealizing the next version of that track. After switching up her sound, “New Love” came about in New York, and “Last Dance” two weeks later in Toronto. Her debut album is currently slated for release on June 2 of this year.

Heather: So, I wanted to start off with that [the Lollapalooza 2016 aftershow]. How was it that night [July 29, 2016] opening up for The 1975, who are also London based musicians?

Dua: It was amazing, I really enjoyed myself. It was my first time doing anything like that, like opening for such a cool artist. I don't know, it was exciting to get to engage with new fans and watch The 1975 play after me. It was really, really cool. Then I guess it kind of gave me the confidence to really want to do another support tour, but a proper one and go out for a month. I just went out and did a tour with Troye Sivan all over the East coast, for a month. Like the second leg of his tour, which was really fun. So yeah, it's just been such a great experience. I love it.

Heather: At that show I was so happy, because those fans were there, I feel like for you because they knew your music.

Dua: You think?

Heather: It was so mind blowing. It was the coolest thing to see.

Dua: Yeah, it was really, really exciting and it was just so much fun to perform. Me and my band still talk about that, because also it was like in between all the festival shows that I actually get to play in a venue, which is really cool. Just realizing when you have actual time to sound check and just get everything right, it makes all the difference.

Heather: Mm-hmm. So I want start all from the beginning, I know you lived in London until you were about 11 and then you moved back to Kosovo. Was what your childhood like?

Dua: Well, I guess when I moved to Kosovo for me, it was really exciting and fun. I could speak the language but I couldn't read or write in the language. It was all in all a really great experience, I made so many amazing friends that I wanted to do music on more of a global scale. I felt like I could do that from London. When I decided to move at 15 I knew why I was doing it and being the new girl in school sometimes is tough, but you figure out a way.

Heather: Was it easy to get a creative community surrounding you? I'm from a small town so I kinda know it's hard to be surrounded by a creative community. No one really knows there's a music scene and stuff. Was it easy to find?

Dua: Yeah, yeah I mean because it was just like I was in school, and I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do music but I didn't really know that it was potentially a possibility I guess. At that point it was just friends, because it was friends in my class. I spent most of my day with them but when I moved to London and I started to going to theatre school that's when I really started finding my circle, who I wanted to hang out with. It became a bit more apparent I think when I started finding people that, like-minded people that kind of had the same goals as I did.

Heather: That's so awesome. This is going to go way back, but I know your dad is a musician but do you know your first musical memory? When you first felt super inspired by music?

Dua: I don't really know. I think just because I was surrounded by it so much. I think maybe when I saw Katy Perry on stage for the first time at The HMV Apollo in London. I was about 15 and I was just like, "Fuck, I want to do that so badly."

Heather: Oh man, I'm sure that was so incredible.

Dua: Yeah, it was. Then she puts on such a good show. It was definitely one of those things where I was like, "Man I want to do something like that, I want to have my own show."

Heather: I could totally picture it, like the whole production thing. It would be so awesome.

Dua: Yeah, absolutely.

Heather: Once you got to London did you know how to slowly gather up the creative team (like your manager) since your dad's a musician, or did you sort of have to learn how to gather up a team like by yourself?

Dua: No I was posting covers up online, and I was just contacting people through social media. Basically I found my manager through social media, it was more like a friend of mine.

A producer that I had met online that liked one of my covers, was just kind of helping me out with some stuff. Showing me about what different things mean, like publishing deals and few other things. Yeah through him I met a friend who then introduced me to my manager. So it was just like a series of fortunate events I think. You know ups and downs, but it led me in the right direction.

Heather: That's so cool to hear. I know that "Hotter Than Hell" was a song that kind of started it all for you, one of the first songs that you wrote for the album and it kind of dictated where the album was heading. When you were creating it did you know it was going to be this massive?

Dua: No, I didn't. I always hoped it would be, only because it was the song that ... Like you said was just kind of started everything for me. I felt a very massive connection to it. I always hoped that it would do really well. It's one of those things, especially now that music changing so much and streaming is taking over. It's sometimes quite hard for a new artist to make it through, but yeah I guess people saw something in it. Yeah, that just attracted them to it.

Heather: It's such a massive song, it's amazing how much you blew up after that.

Dua: Thank you so much, thank you. Yeah, things changed a bit.

Heather: When creating this album, I know it took like a couple years. Did you feel any sort of like limitations when creating it?

Dua: I guess I was my worst enemy at points. Where the only thing getting in between my work was me and to not being able to really open up. The second I kind of learned that, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks that's in the room. As long as I can open up, that's the way I'm gonna get the best song out of myself. It was just depending on the day, how much I felt like I wanted to open up. Some days I felt like I wanted to close up and not talk to anyone, and some days I really wanted to get everything out. Some days you'd get really lucky and write a really honest song and something that I felt would be really good on the album. Some days I felt like I was lying to myself, because I wasn't exactly getting what I wanted out of the studio session. I'm still learning and there are a lot more things that I want to write about, and talk about. Yeah, it'll come out soon enough.

Heather: So I know that when you do co-writing in the studio, you want to get to know the other person just as much as they want to get to know you. Who is your favorite person to co-write with? Do you have just one or a couple?

Dua: I've got quite a few people I like co-writing with, I love working with this guy called Talay Riley. I loved working with Andrew Wyatt, I love working with a guy called Kozmeniuk [Stephen ‘KOZ’ Kozmeniuk] Because there are loads of people I love working with, and I guess it took me a little while to find a little group of people that I go back and forth and work with. Yeah, there's really, really cool people that became good friends of mine now as well. Friends, going into a session and hanging out with them to actually becoming good friends with them.

Heather: How far along on the album process are you? I think you said early next year [2017] you're going to release it?

Dua: Yeah, yeah well the plan is February [now pushed to June 2]. So yeah, just kind of getting everything set and ready. There's still some things that I'm missing from it. Like I wanna have a feature on the album, obviously I don't know if that's going to happen but we'll see.

Heather: So when you're writing a song, where do you mostly pull the lyrics from? Is it like imagination or is it real life?

Dua: It's all real life. Especially because I was in such early stages of learning how to write a song, I felt that making up a story was too hard of a task for me to do. I just wanted to just really open up and just speak about things that I know and write about things that I know. That's proven to be very therapeutic for me and enjoy it a lot, and every time I feel like I went in and said I was going to make a story up. It somehow ends up being about me.

Heather: I was watching your music videos from like a year ago before you got signed. “Be The One” and then "New Love". I feel like with your new music videos you still have that sense of identity. How was creating the 'Be The One' video with Ansel Elgort?

Dua: It was really exciting and I'm really excited to of had the opportunity to have done another video for that song, and the reason we did another video for it because we're re-releasing the song in the UK. It was the only place we didn't, it kind of skipped us because we didn't expect it to do so well all over Europe. It kind of just happened, so it's exciting to have another opportunity at it. Getting to do a crazy Sci-Fi video and also with Ansel in it, it was really exciting. He's undoubtedly an amazing actor and it was cool to work alongside him. It was really inspiring to watch him work. Yeah, it's one of those videos I'll always look back on, it was really fun.

Photography done on July 29, 2016 by Heather Hawke | Interview done on December 19, 2016 by Heather Hawke