Dua Lipa on Glastonbury, gay best friends and who she’s become | My i-D

Dua Lipa on Glastonbury, gay best friends and who she’s become | My i-D

Sometimes I’m like looking around the room, I’m like, I can’t believe this is like what we’re talking about right now. I feel like I’m cosplaying pop star or something. Hi, I’m Dua Lipa I have brown eyes. My hair is red, I’m allergic to nothing. And this is my i-D. My phone is never turned off. Sometimes I leave it in the other room, but it’s always on. I think, Like, I wanted this to happen. I’d watch my favourite pop stars on TV and it would seem so far fetched. It was like they live on the TV. To really be here at this point, and to know the ins and outs of what it takes to put on a performance, or to make an album or, you know, these things, the things that I learned on the job that I’m constantly being surprised by all the time I think I go to different friends for different things. My best gay friends I know that I can call them when I feel like I’m feeling myself in a look and they’ll be like, they’ll give me the validation I’ve been looking for. Or they would literally take one look at me and be like, what happened? Are you okay? Is there something wrong? I think they’re definitely like the ones to check me. It’s quite interesting when I sit and I play my songs for my friends, and it’s someone whose opinion, like, really means a lot to me. I hear the song differently. I immediately know without them even saying what I need to change or what I need to do because I just hear it in such a different way. Yeah, I’m always thinking ahead. I mean, when I was working on my first record, I was thinking about my third album, I initially started working on ‘Radical Optimism’ in 2021. I feel like I need to write myself into a good idea, and so I spent a lot of time writing. But the way I was writing these songs is very much a dear diary so the second an emotion or a feeling would come in, I’d be like, right, I want to write about this and this is how I want to, how I want to say it. So I think sonically they’re part of the same family. They’re just very different feelings and emotions as they were arising in the moment. Initially, the writing part is just to to try and get my stories out and then it’s really about how people are going to experience it in a live setting. I really think about that the most. Well, I was just about to leave Australia in November 2022, and I got an email with the offer to perform on the Friday night Glastonbury 2024 headline slot, and I just yeah, lost my mind. I was so excited. So I’ve been sitting on this secret for a while, It’s so surreal. It’s the biggest thing of yeah my career, so don’t fuck it up, I think there have been like moments of let down or moments where you know, you feel not good enough or that things aren’t going to work out and it could seem like the end of the world in that moment. And then in hindsight, you look back on that and go, when it’s really bad, it’s never the end. It’s never how things are going to pan out. This is a phase. It’s something I have to go through. It’s something that I have to deal with and feel, and I just have to walk through. Someone said that you only, like turn into an adult when you like all your cells fully regenerate 28, fully an adult. so I guess in some ways I feel more women than I’ve ever felt. I always get very like, nostalgic. I love a trip down memory lane. Looking back at photos and also just wondering, like what that Dua would have thought of me now kind of thing. So that’s too sentimental is that a bit soppy? I do, I do think that I’m like ugh, if only she knew.

In the latest episode of My i-D, seven-time Brit and three-time Grammy award-winning pop star Dua Lipa takes us back through the whirlwind near-decade she’s spent climbing her way to the top, and the grounding, personal moments that marked the journey. From her early years as a teenage girl dreaming about music, through to her landmark Glastonbury headline slot, Dua reflects upon it all.

There’s also some insight into the musician’s phone habits and her gay friends, her fashion and style, and how she now finally feels like a grown up.

00:00 – 00:29 – Intro
00:30 – 00:58 – Becoming a pop star
00:58 – 01:22 – Her gay friends and fashion
01:23 – 01:40 – Her songwriting trust circle
01:41 – 02:30 – The making of Radical Optimism
02:31 – 03:01 – Headlining Glastonbury
03:02 – 03:25 – Overcoming hurdles
03:26 – 03:40 – Feeling like a grown up
03:41 – 04:08 – Nostalgia and reflection
04:08 – 04:15 – Credits

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