Every week I write about an artist or group of artists and their starts in the music industry. The younger artists always have interesting stories, especially in this age of social media. I guess we tend to look at social media as the cause for all things good and bad today. However, I view social media as another mode of communication. As such, social media affects all industries in the world, including music. This week I chose to feature another of the artists who used YouTube to gain recognition and eventually a major recording contract. This week we feature English singer/songwriter and model Dua Lipa.
YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google’s subsidiaries.
Relatively new on the music scene, Dua Lipa has experienced a quick and deliberate breakthrough. Most of the heavy lifting started in 2015, as she began working on her début album. Her entire music story started a while before. That’s where we will start as well.
Dua Lipa was born on August 22, 1995 in London, to Albanian parents from Kosovo who had left Pristina in the early 1990s. This makes Lipa the second artist featured in Weekly Music Commentary with Kosovo origins. Rita Ora was featured several years ago. That’s as far as the comparisons go, as Dua Lipa proves to be an original artist. There is more to the comparison story and I’ll reveal it later in this post.
Dua attended Sylvia Young Theatre School as a youngster. She spoke about her interesting experience in an interview with Digital Spy. “I went to academic school during the week, then at weekends I went to theatre school. It was very cliché – kids singing around in halls practicing their lines and people just tap dancing in the corridors. But it was great. I made some of my closest friends there”. I had a similar experience during my high school years. It really prepared me for college and later musical endeavors. Lipa’s family moved back to Kosovo where she attended the private school Mileniumi i Tretë in Pristina.
Dua does speak of a few great influences from her younger years. Lipa grew up listening to her father, singer Dukagjin Lipa. “My dad was a musician and I’ve always grown up listening to him sing his own songs and other people’s. [He] was rock but it wasn’t heavy metal – it was easy-going. His kind of thing was a lot of Sting and The Police and Stereophonics and loads of Bob Dylan and Radiohead.” Nelly Furtado and Pink left an indelible impression upon young Dua Lipa as well. “I like the realness. I like everything they sang about, it wasn’t sugar-coated. Everything was real and what was actually going on in their lives and how they felt. My first album was Woah Nelly – I’m obsessed.”
Dua Lipa’s musical career began at age 14, when she began covering songs by other artists on YouTube. Nelly Furtado and Pink once again were her favorites. At the age of 15, she moved back to London with aspirations of becoming a singer. Lipa lived with a family friend and studied at Parliament Hill School, returning to the Sylvia Young Theatre School on Saturdays. She also soon began working as a model.
Of course, aspirations are a long way from a recording contract. Therefore, the combination of YouTube, Sylvia Young Theatre School and her work as a model proved to be a perfect storm of preparation for future work. I don’t discount the influence of her father, possibly providing her with an honest view of what life as a musician would look and feel like. Nevertheless, by the age of nineteen Dua Lipa was ready for something larger.
In 2015, Lipa began working on her début album for Warner Music Group. In August 2015, she released her first single “New Love”, produced by Emile Haynie and Andrew Wyatt. She released her second single “Be the One”, in October 2015. “Be the One” achieved success across Europe, reaching number one in Belgium, Poland and Slovakia, as well as charting within the top 10 in over 11 European territories. In Australia and New Zealand, the song became an airplay success, reaching numbers 6 and 20 respectively. An international recording star was quickly gaining notice around the world.
Early in the process many compared Dua Lipa to another young star, Lana Del Rey. She spoke about the comparisons in that same Digital Spy interview. “We’re so different. It isn’t a bad thing – I think she’s great. I think the only reason we get compared is because we have the same manager. And when I dropped my first song it was produced by [Lana Del Rey producer] Emile Haynie so it was like, ‘Oop! New Lana!’ “Once I dropped ‘Be The One’, I feel like people actually understood that it’s very, very different. All the songs that are to come are very different to Lana. I’m not mad at the comparison. It’s good people will get to see different things that are to come and hopefully form a different opinion.”
I featured Del Rey a while back and could understand fully what Dua Lipa was saying. Many artists share management and production teams, but that does not mean they will share a particular sound. I like both artists, but they are very different musically.
Dua Lipa’s self-titled début studio album was released on June 2, 2017. Its sixth single “New Rules”, released in the following month, became Lipa’s first number one in the UK, and the first by a female solo artist to reach the top in the UK since “Hello” by Adele in 2015. Her best-selling single to date, the song also charted in the top ten in other territories, including number 2 in Australia, number 6 in the US and number 7 in Canada. Lipa performed at the Glastonbury Festival in June, attracting one of the biggest audiences at that year’s event.
When an artist has a huge hit or a landmark live performance, many call what occurred a “break out”. Without a doubt, last year Dua Lipa did “break out” in a large way. However, what happened cannot be labeled a fluke or accident. What happened was quite real. Now we are awaiting more music.
Dua Lipa’s album is better than I expected. “New Rules” is a great song but I encourage everyone to listen to the entire album before forming an opinion. Once again after l listened I placed it in my personal library. I’m still listening as I’m writing this article.
Lipa announced via social media that she had begun working on new material for her second album. She is working with MNEK, who previously co-wrote her single “IDGAF”. The singer also collaborated with electronic music producer Whethan on a song called “High” for the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack released in February 2018. On April 6, 2018, Lipa and Calvin Harris released the single “One Kiss” which topped the UK Singles Chart on 20 April, making it Lipa’s second UK number one; Lipa provided the vocals and is also credited as a writer.
Yes, the new music has already started to appear. Will Dua Lipa’s followup album be better than the début? It’s possible!