The Career of Dua Lipa

Grace Brennan

On August 22, 1995 in London, England, Dua Lipa was born. Her parents, Dukagjin and Anessa, arrived in London three years prior as refugees after fleeing Prisina, Kosovo to escape conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Dua is currently an English singer and songwriter as well as a former model. She has established herself as a top leading artist. 

Dua was heavily influenced by her father who was in a rock band, which resulted in her attending the Sylvia-Young Theater Art School part time. Shortly after, in 2008, Kosovo had declared independence, so her family moved back. Dua had found it difficult to fit in there, so she started covering songs by some artists she had favored at the time and posting them to YouTube when she was 14 years old.  She was allowed to move back to London when she was 15. Dua did this so that she would be able to pursue her dream  career in music. According to Biography.com, Dua Lipa stated during an interview with CBS News, “I was like, I want to do music, but I want to do it on a global scale. I have to go back to where everything is happening.”

After convincing her parents to let her move back to London, she eventually moved in with a family friend. She reattented her old school the Sylvia-Young Theatre Art School and took on jobs such as hostessing to help pay. Lipa had even signed with a modeling agency to make more connections in the music industry, but she barely got any good assignments as she was not interested in trying to lose weight as the agency had wanted her to. She did however, get one good assignment for the X-Factor when she sang in a commercial for the show. Shortly after Lipa was offered a music publishing deal, she contacted a lawyer to help her with the deal. That lawyer then put her in contact with the same manager that Lana Del Ray has. Lipa ended up signing with this manager, who worked for Tap Management. 

In 2015, Lipa got a record deal and her first single, “New Love” came out that year as well. Her self-titled album was put out in 2017 and had mediocre success until her single “New Rules” came out. The New Rules music video has been viewed more than 2 billion times and was charted No.2 in Australia, No.6 in Canada, and No.6 in the U.S. However, as Lipa was growing in fame she was also receiving more criticism. In 2018, she was being criticized for her lack of ability to dance and her poorly done choreography. 

In 2019, at the 61st Grammy Awards, Lipa ended up winning Best New Artist, along with winning a second Grammy that year. In March 2020, she was getting ready to release her second album when it leaked.. She decided to release it a week early, unsure of how it would do with Covid starting to take over. However, her fans ended up loving it, and she became the top female artist on Spotify within a week of her album coming out. Lipa received six nominations for the 63rd Grammy Awards, with Future Nostalgia winning Best Pop Vocal Album. She is currently working on a third album. NME states, “Dua Lipa has confirmed that she’s hard at work on her forthcoming third album, teasing that fans will be in for a surprise when they hear the pop singer’s new material.” Along with working on a new album, Lipa is also about to make her acting debut in the new spy thriller Argylle. Fans are very excited to see all of her new work.