24 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com September, 2017
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MARKUS PRITZI; SHERVIN LAINEZ; NOLAN KNIGHTB
ackstage at bonna-
roo, Dua Lipa has a
hard time believing
what just happened.
Two hours ago, she took the
stage in the 30-degree Tennes-
see heat to an overflow crowd
full of fans who sang along to
every word of her moody pop
songs, even though most of them
have been out only a week. Stalk-
ing the stage in a white tank top
and a choker, Lipa seized on the
energy, fi ring off acrobatic kicks
and punches, urging everyone to
“Make some fucking noise!”
“There are some moments
where I just stop dancing and
stare because I’m trying to take
it in,” says Lipa, 21, in a thick
London accent. She recalls play-
ing for a small crowd at Lolla-
palooza only a year ago, when
she was little more than a curi-
osity to bloggers. But in the past
few months, she’s domi nated
U.S. festivals like Governors Ball
and Coachella, while her jittery
heartbreak ballad “Scared to be
Lonely” has surpassed 300 mil-
lion Spotify streams. In June,
her fi rst LP debuted in the Top
10 in several countries. “It’s overwhelming and really exciting,”
she says. Lipa likes to classify her music as “dance-crying”: “It’s a
thing!” she says. “Lyrically, it’s really sad and upsetting, but then
you want to dance to it.”
Lipa grew up the daughter of Albanian immigrants who had
left Kosovo during the politically tumultuous Nineties. (When
he wasn’t working in marketing, her dad sang in a Police-infl u-
enced rock band.) But her parents always dreamed of returning to
Kosovo, and around the time it declared independence from Ser-
bia, they did. Lipa was 11, and
struggled with the adjustment.
At 15, she managed to convince
her parents to let her return to
London and live on her own.
She became obsessed with
pop music and enrolled in the
famous Sylvia Young Theatre
School, where Rita Ora and Amy
Winehouse are alumnae. Lipa
started posting YouTube covers,
mainly to get the attention of
classmates. But she also got the
attention of Ben Mawson, Lana
Del Rey’s manager. He organ-
ised an intense period of artist
development for her: fi ve days a
week in the studio, working with
diff erent writers until something
clicked. “Sometimes it’d be really
scary for me to open up in a room
with co-writers,” she says. She
got over it. Lipa said she wrote
“Hotter Than Hell” about “a re-
lationship that really fucked me
over”. “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)”
is a bitter anthem aimed at a
modelling agent who once told
her to lose weight.
For the album, Lipa en listed
big-name collaborators like
Nineteen85 (who has produced
Drake and Nicki Minaj) and Emile Haynie (Del Rey, Eminem). She
also recruited Chris Martin, of her favourite band, Coldplay, after
sending him an e-mail. He invited Lipa to L.A. to write (their duet,
“Homesick”, closes the album).
By getting past her nerves and pitching Martin, Lipa proved
she’s getting closer to becoming the confi dent character she is in
her songs. “I’d pretend that I was really cocky and actually didn’t
give a fuck,” she says of being in the studio. “It was therapeutic. I’d
listen back and be like, ‘Yeah! I’m a badass!’ ” ADAM GOLDDua Lipa’s Tough Love
After living in Kosovo and getting over a bad relationship, she’s ready
to claim her place as pop’s badass heartbreak queenAN R&B CROONER WITH
CLASSICAL CHOPS
CHARLY BLISS: A ’90S
POWER-POP BLASTKONDI BAND’S WEST
AFRICAN HYPNOSISSince Spotify added
his falsetto ballad
“Frustrated” to an R&B
play list, R.Lum.R. has
racked up 17 million
streams. “I didn’t know
people would react
so strongly,” says the
Florida singer (real
name Reggie Williams), who studied classical
guitar before experimenting with electronic pop.
His debut EP is out this month. ELIAS LEIGHT
Eva Hendricks fell in love with Nine
rock listening to her brother Sam’s
Weezer LPs. Now, Sam backs her
up on drums in Charly Bliss, who o
Guppy brilliantly channel bands lik
Breeders. “It’s full of bizarre stories
she says. “Westermarck” is about
her boyfriend falling in love with hi
second-cousin; “Ruby” is a tribute
her therapist so honest, she thoug
it might “violate patient-therapist
contract laws”. JON DOLANd his hypnotic thumb-
a street performer in Sierra
getting discovered by pro-
Boima. They became Kondi
Band, incorporating
deep grooves and
snaking synth-bass
on their debut.
ma hopes to tour the U.S.,
ump immigration restric-
ons permitting: “It won’t be
imple.” WILL HERMESicks
arlyR& R
NEW ARTISTS
“Lyrically,
it’s really
sad, but
you want to
dance to it,”
Lipa says.