Dua Lipa wants to show me her skylights. They’re not hers, exactly, belonging instead to the owners of the London Airbnb where she’s currently self-quarantining with her boyfriend, model Anwar Hadid. It’s actually the second Airbnb the 24-year-old singer has rented since returning from a trip to Australia to find her flat flooded, but they’re rolling with it. I can hear Hadid’s soft laughter as Lipa tilts her laptop toward the ceiling. It’s been four months since the global COVID-19 pandemic began, three weeks since the U.K. and U.S. mandated that nonessential workers stay home, and 14 days since Lipa released her second album, Future Nostalgia. So naturally, this interview is being conducted via Zoom. The skylights are beautiful.
“London tends to be one of those places where it’s always gloomy and rainy—and that’s not to say that the weather won’t change in a couple of days, but now the trees are fully blossoming, the sky’s completely blue,” she says. It’s hard to stay positive when there’s so much suffering, she adds. But the sunshine streaming in from the skylights feels good. Spotting the pink supermoon a few nights ago helped, too. “It’s nice to see the earth almost replenishing a little bit. Everything’s kind of taking a breather.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way, of course. By now, almost anyone who pays even the slightest attention to pop culture is familiar with Dua Lipa’s career trajectory, from her days of posting covers to YouTube and SoundCloud to a serendipitous referral to Lana Del Rey’s manager Ben Mawson to a 2017 self-тιтled debut album featuring the catchy breakup tune “New Rules.” Next came the internet nickname “Dula Peep,” courtesy of Wendy Williams, followed by two Grammys in 2019 (Best New Artist and Best Dance Recording).
Promoting a big pop album in isolation, remotely—let alone a high-pressure, highly anticipated sophomore album—is new territory for any artist, and a path few would choose (Lady Gaga, Haim, Alicia Keys, and many others have postponed their spring and summer releases due to the coronavirus), but ultimately, it wasn’t up to her.
The buildup to a planned April 3 release had started in earnest last fall with the album’s first single, “Don’t Start Now,” essentially a sequel to “New Rules,” about moving on and heading directly to the club. Everything was supposed to culminate with a well-timed media blitz—including a Saturday Night Live appearance on March 28 and the release of this cover story about, well, now. And then a bot alerted her label, Warner Records, that the album had leaked a week early. Before that moment, she too had been weighing a delay. “But I think [the leak] just kind of solidified my choice that I wanted it to be out April 3 anyway,” Lipa says. “This is me going into my celestial beliefs, but it was like, Okay, this is just how it’s meant to be. And I am really grateful that the music is out.”
