Dua Lipa is having a whirlwind of a year. Since releasing her second critically acclaimed studio, ‘Future Nostalgia’, earlier this year, the 25-year-old British singer has been on a roll – and no one is going to stop her. However, the gorgeous talent of Kosovar Albanian descent hasn’t always had it easy. In an interview for her featured spread of the December issue UK magazine Attitude, Dua Lipa spoke up about how social media and the internet (along with the bullies, trolls and critics that lived on the platforms) knocked her confidence and self-belief to an all-time low.
“For a short period of time, it messed with my mental health. You know, I’d go on stage and if somebody was filming me, in my head, I wasn’t, like, ‘Oh, they’re filming me because they want to keep it.’ I was like, ‘They’re going to film it so they can laugh at me or something.”
Her fears were not unfounded. In 2018, Dua Lipa found herself going viral – for all the wrong reasons. As one of the performings acts at the 2018 Jingle Ball tour, Dua Lipa performed hits like ‘Blow Your Mind’, ‘IDGAF’, ‘New Rules’ and ‘One Kiss’ from her self-titled debut studio album. And while Dua got to perform alongside big names like Sabrina Carpenter, Meghan Trainor, Calvin Harris, Marshmello, Bazzi, Bebe Rexha, 5 Seconds of Summer, Khalid and Normani – the experience was marred by a clip of her dancing.
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Online trolls mocked Lipa, saying she lacked skills and going so far as to express secondhand embarrassment for her. While some targeted the person in charge of the choreography, much of the heat was aimed at Lipa who eventually became a meme. Addressing the meme, she says,
“There were so many things, especially when you start out, like a video of me dancing and they’re like, ‘Ah well, she has no stage presence’ – but they’d never been to one of my shows, they’d never seen me perform.”
It got so and that Lipa questioned her choice to be an artist, stating,
“I experienced a s*** tonne at the end of my first record, and it was definitely something that gave me anxiety and made me upset and made me feel like I wasn’t good enough and made me feel like, maybe I’m not meant to be here and on the stage,”
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You’d think that winning two Grammy awards ( ‘Best New Artist’ and Best Dance Recording’) at the Grammys last year –back in 2019 would change her perspective, but no –
“Even after the Grammys, some people were like, ‘Well, she doesn’t deserve it.'”
Thankfully, after a social media detox and having time to herself, the ‘Physical’ singer has come out stronger.
“Yeah, it was a tough time, but I’m also so grateful for experience because I became so much stronger. I became so much more confident after that. Now I know what I’m good at; I know how to be good at what I do; [and] I know how much work it takes to be good at what I do.”
She even dished out some advice for those who use social media on the daily:
“We should learn from each other’s mistakes and we should try to teach each other. I think there is so much judgement and meanness… cancel culture is so dangerous and toxic.”
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