Dua Lipa (album)
Dua Lipa is the debut studio album by English singer Dua Lipa. It was released on 2 June 2017 through Warner Bros. Records. The album is a dance-pop, electropop, and R&B record with elements of disco, hip hop, and tropical house. The production was handled by artists such as Digital Farm Animals, Andrew Wyatt, Greg Wells, Ian Kirkpatrick, Axident, and James Flannigan, alongside others. It includes a sole guest appearance from Miguel, as well as additional vocals from Chris Martin of Coldplay.
The album was supported by eight singles, including the UK top-ten singles "Be the One" and "IDGAF", as well as "New Rules", which became Lipa's first number-one on the UK Singles Chart and top-ten hit on the US Billboard Hot 100. Lipa promoted the album with appearances at several award shows, television programs and festivals, as well as embarking on a series of concert tours from 2016 to 2018. She also supported Troye Sivan, Bruno Mars and Coldplay on their respective tours. In October 2018, Lipa reissued the album, subtitled the Complete Edition, adding eight additional tracks including "One Kiss" with Calvin Harris, which was Lipa's second number-one song and the best-selling song of 2018 in the UK, and the UK top-ten single "Electricity" with Silk City.
Dua Lipa was met with generally favourable reviews from music critics. Many praised Lipa's vocals as well as the lyrics and production. It appeared on numerous year-end lists, including ones published by Billboard and Rolling Stone. The album was nominated for British Album of the Year at the Brit Awards, whilst "New Rules", "IDGAF", and "One Kiss", were all nominated for British Single of the Year, the latter of which won. The album also helped Lipa win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. Despite being released in 2017, the album reached peak popularity and became commercially successful in 2018. It reached number three in the UK, and reached the top 10 in thirteen other countries. The album is certified multi-platinum in the UK and five other countries. As of February 2021, Dua Lipa has sales figures of six million units worldwide.
Background
Lipa developed a love for music at an early age, influenced by her father who performed in the Kosovan rock band Oda. She began singing at the age of five and wrote her first song about how she wanted to be like her mom when she was older. Lipa played the cello in school and also auditioned for her school's choir, but was rejected after being told she could not sing. She began singing lessons after that. While living in Pristina, Kosovo during her teen years, Lipa's ambition to start a music career grew. At the age of 14, she wrote the song, "Lions & Tigers & Bears" which was inspired by The Wizard of Oz. She published it on her SoundCloud page as her first demo in February 2012. Lipa determined that the smaller music industry of Kosovo did not match the type of career she wanted as she desired a "global scale" one. As a result, she relocated to London where she was born, at the age of 15. Her parents felt comfortable allowing her to move there as the daughter of one of their friends lived there.After finishing school, Lipa took a gap year to find a manager while working at a restaurant. She was influenced by the discovery of Justin Bieber on YouTube which inspired her to take the same route as he. She began a modeling career to gain contacts in the music industry. Lipa began posting covers of songs such as "If I Ain't Got You" by Alicia Keys and "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera on YouTube. Although her videos did not reach great popularity, she used them as a form of portfolio and took them to London clubs such as KOKO where she thought she would meet people from the music industry who she could show them to. Additionally, Lipa uploaded music to SoundCloud, gave demo CDs to radio stations and sang in advertisements. After starring in an X Factor commercial, she met a producer who offered her a publishing deal. Flummoxed by this, she contacted an online friend for help as she did not understand it. He redirected Lipa to his attorney who advised her to not take it. The lawyer was impressed by her and introduced Lipa to Ben Mawson of TAP management while she was holding meetings with management companies. She eventually signed a publishing and management deal with TAP and a record deal with Warner Records; the latter company wanting her because they did not have a big female pop artist.
Writing and recording
Early sessions and development
After meeting Mawson in 2013, Lipa was invited to writing sessions by him and Ed Millett, the co-owners of TAP; this happened while they were deciding whether to sign her. Mawson and Millett intended on having Lipa learn the songwriter trade with the help of a wide range of collaborators. She was more interested in "discovering" her sound at first than in landing a record deal; she wanted to have a sound like a cross between rapper J. Cole and Nelly Furtado, but the reaction of the producers was not very positive. Lipa was still working as a waitress and was not getting much sleep. Thus, Mawson and Millett gave her a monthly salary so she could quit her job and focus on songwriting. They organized an intense period of artist development where Lipa went into sessions five days a week with different writers until something came out of them.Lipa found it difficult going into the early sessions because she did not know the writers and producers there. She thought it was difficult to open up to strangers. Lipa would attempt to get to know them before writing to make herself more comfortable. The singer also attempted to create only radio songs in early sessions, which limited her and stressed her out, resulting in her creativity lacking and an amount of pressure being put on her. Lipa eventually got over this and wrote about how situations made her feel; that is when she started writing the songs she enjoyed. When Lipa began writing, she had several ideas and knew how to get her thoughts out. However, she had trouble building a song so she enlisted the help of co-writers, many of which she became good friends with. She described it as a learning process and slowly became confident with her songwriting. As Lipa wrote more, she developed a skill for songwriting leading her to writing songs about situations relevant to her or her friends. The singer took some inspiration with her writing from the "dramas" she saw while working as a hostess and "the dark side of nightlife". She desired to create this idea with as "seductive and sweet but doesn't sugar-coat" what happens. Lipa stated that she wanted to bring "a bit more realness" speak the truth "about what being a teenager is really like" as before music was dominated with how amazing it was. In 2015, Lipa made four trips to Los Angeles to write songs; she got a palm tree tattoo on her left elbow to commemorate her first month of writing songs there. Songwriter Lucy Taylor gave Lipa "Be the One" before she had released any music; the singer was reluctant to record it due to the fact that she had not written it.
Lipa formed a close partnership with producer Koz. She would often send him stuff that was just the piano and he would produce it and make it cohesive. Lipa recalled that he made everything easier for her and understood her vision for the album. Koz revealed that he was impressed by Lipa's unique vocals. Of the 25 original songs included on every edition of the album, Koz produced nine, including "Hotter than Hell" and "Thinking 'Bout You". They were the first two songs written for the album and were written in the early sessions arranged by Mawson and Millet. The former helped define what the album would sound like and helped the singer land her record deal with Warner Bros in 2014. Following this, Lipa went into many failed writing sessions attempting to recreate the song. She thought she needed more songs like it but eventually realized that she did not. That is when Lipa wrote "New Love" in New York and "Last Dance" in Toronto. The latter song also had a role in defining the sound of the album; Lipa stated that once she heard its finished version, she would take the song to producers and say "this is my sound".
Later writing sessions
Lipa normally would write a song in one day, usually within two to three hours. Lipa would often go into studio sessions with an idea already in mind and beginning writing, slowly realizing how the lyrics has relevance in her life. She would also write notes and take them to the studio to write a song about them, only if the note was still relevant to her at the moment. As she cared more about the story, Lipa would make up melodies to fit around her lyrics and often change the melody so she could get all the words that she needed in the story. Lipa felt as though the writing sessions were her form of therapy. Aside from Cole and Furtado, Lipa took inspiration from artists including Sting, the Police, David Bowie, Radiohead, Stereophonics, Pink, Destiny's Child, Missy Elliott, Christina Aguilera, Method Man, Redman, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Kendrick Lamar, Schoolboy Q, and Chance the Rapper."No Goodbyes" was a personal song for Lipa to write; she described it as the hardest song for her to write on the album. She pre-empted the future when writing it as she was mourning a relationship she was still in, but hoping for the best. It took Lipa a while to have the courage to write it as she was worried the person she wrote it about would know it is about them. Lipa explained that she had been travelling a lot and letting that person down, where they were not living their lives while waiting for her. "For Julian" was written by Lipa and Eg White for Lipa's friend who was going through a hard period in their life. The song was not released digitally, however it appeared on the Japanese edition of the album.