FEATURE:
Pretty Please
Dua Lipa: The Modern Pop Superstar and Privacy
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I will keep this fairly brief…
PHOTO CREDIT: Bryan Derballa for Rolling Stone
but there was an interview in the Los Angeles Times where we seemingly get a contrasting focus on Dua Lipa. Labelled very much as a modern Pop superstar, her more private and mysterious side is also discussed. I am still thinking about the documentary, Framing Britney Spears, and how tough it has been for Spears through her career. Alongside the battle she has regarding her finances and conservatorship, she has also faced so much press intrusion, sexism and unpleasantness. I do worry about modern Pop artists who grow big and then have to face intrusion. This is not anything new. For decades, this has been how things have been for popular artists. Dua Lipa talked about how she is subjected to paparazzi all of the time and, when she comes out of the gym, there are people waiting to take her photo. Not only is it intimidating, but it is also not flattering. On Instagram, she can curate her own image and redress the balance in that sense. Unfortunately, because artists have to promote themselves and keep their online presence strong, that means they are more exposed and enjoy less privacy. With a massive Instagram audience, Lipa is subject to negative feedback and those who attack her image. As is the same with so many major artists, the persona we see through their music is very different to the one that people see behind closed doors.
Some might say that this kind of pressure and lack of privacy is what artists sign up for and is unavoidable in the digital age. Many artists try and ween themselves off of social media and need to take breaks. This does not only apply to Dua Lipa, but one wonders how easy it is to detach and disconnect from social media when promotion has to be so intense. Artists are putting to much effort into promotion, social media is an inevitably big part of that. Dua Lipa is someone who is portrayed as a bit of a jet-setter and this huge star, but so much of that is fabricated or exaggerated. Whilst she has to do promotional shoots and we do see these quite provocative and sexy images, that is to do with her work and her expression herself. I have looked online today (4th March) and seen so many tabloid stories from the past day or so commenting on Dua Lipa in L.A. I think she was out with her boyfriend and we got all these captions about her looks and sex appeal. The fact that she has to handle the press and headlines nearly every time she step outside is one of the worst things about modern life! Couple press hassle with trolls online and the sort of split opinions she gets when she posts anything to Instagram and it can have a really bad effect on her mental-health. I am using Dua Lipa as an example as she has been profiled recently; that divide between a very successful and famous artist and someone who is private and keen to remain grounded – she is also quite mysterious and there are sides to her that we do not know.
I guess my feature is extending now beyond a general rule for Pop artists and more towards expectations placed on women. I will source from an interesting interview Dua Lipa provided to The Guardian last year. I don’t think that, in terms of their private lives being under scrutiny, comparably big male artists have the same experience as women do. There is so much focus on appearance, personal lives and their social media content. Not that one can draw too many comparisons between Dua Lipa and Britney Spears, but one cannot help about the pressures a modern Pop phenomenon of today faces. Is it possible for Dua Lipa and artists like her to remain private or be shielded from the worst of social media?! The Guardian highlighted how Britney Spears was hounded - and they noted the way the media exploited and sexualised her:
“Spears carried the extra burden of embodying America’s psychotic contradictions over sex for young women – dress sexy but be virginal, convey that you want it but never, God forbid, know what you want, let alone get it; tread as closely to the line of actual sex as possible but never cross it. She rocketed to fame in an era, as the Times critic Wesley Morris astutely points out in the film, when Bill Clinton’s scandalous affair with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky – another big tabloid story whose heroes and villains have been revised with the passage of time and #MeToo – brought the lewd discussion of sex, and the specter of sex panic, back into the public sphere (and tasteless Jay Leno jokes).
Memory is a hazy, gauzy thing. You can remember, intellectually and in tabloid snippets, the frenzy over Spears in the mid-to-late aughts, but not recall the galling starkness of its imagery – a woman hunted and literally hounded by men across Los Angeles, the harried, vertigo-inducing funhouse of camera flashes. Spears’s meltdown was mundane enough to merit a category – what has Britney Spears lost this year? – on the gameshow Family Feud (answers included her mind, her children and her dignity). That detail was probably not memorable enough in 2008; it’s unforgettably crude now”.
Future Nostalgia came out last year and it was listed as one of the finest albums of 2020. I love how there was the odd tender and emotional moment but, more than anything, it was a fun album where Dua Lipa was writing from her own experiences. Inevitably, some people questioned some of her lyrics and highlighted various songs. One has to wonder if a male artist would have attracted the same sort of judgment. When she spoke with The Guardian last April, she discussed the need for greater kindness; how there is a double standard when it comes to women in music:
“Reflecting pop’s long game, Lipa won the Grammy for best new artist in 2019. The backlash took flight. “People being like: ‘She’s been fucking best new artist for so long and she doesn’t deserve that, blah blah blah,’” she recalls. “There were times that I felt people were being so mean that when someone recognised me and said: ‘I really like your music,’ I’d be like: ‘Oh my God, not everyone hates me!’” She says this with self-aware melodrama, though it echoes recent sentiments from Billie Eilish and Britney Spears: how dismal it must feel to see your hard work burned up by hatred
Lipa hopes the #BeKind movement sparked by Caroline Flack’s death might improve online discourse. “The scrutiny not just on social media but in the media, especially towards women, is so intense and unkind and really trying to get a rise out of people,” she says. “The tabloids know very well what they’re doing, and it really affects everyone. You have to be made out of steel to not let words get to you. It’s so sad that we have to learn lessons from somebody’s death.”
IN THIS PHOTO: Dua Lipa/PHOTO CREDIT: David LaChapelle for Rolling Stone
Had Lipa tried to recreate New Rules for album two, “I’d just be in a vicious cycle”, she says. She says she struggled to find her “lyrical language” on her debut, feeling more at ease writing sad songs. “I learned that I could write happy songs that are still really authentic and have the possibility of being cool and not seen as bubblegum.” Most striking is how she sings about sex: mutually pleasurable, orgasmic transcendence mirrored in dazzling disco reveries. On Good in Bed, she nonchalantly celebrates “all that good pipe in the moonlight” from a toxic ex-with-benefits. “Everybody thinks that as a woman, you have to be so careful about how you portray yourself or how you talk about sex, and everything has to be really sweet,” she says mockingly. “It’s just very colloquial and how I chat with my mates.”
Women’s work is always undermined, says Lipa. “We all have to work a little bit harder to be taken seriously, but it’s not something that we’re not used to doing,” she says, rolling her eyes and grinning. She has pointedly described Future Nostalgia as “fun” even though she knows that is exactly the stick critics use to beat it with; that women in pop are only judged as “authentic” when they are weeping by the piano. “Time always tells,” she shrugs. “And in the meantime, I’ll just work for people to take me seriously”.
I do have this concern for artists like Dua Lipa who want to make important and challenging music, but there is always this sense of blowback and criticism. She wants to keep her privacy and not be misperceived, though the constant media focus and the perils of social media make that very hard. The better and more popular comes the more focus comes her way. She is a very inspiring artist and great songwriter, and I hope that she gets time to decompress and enjoy some time in private before she has to think about touring or another album. As much anything, I hope that the Framing Britney Spears documentary makes the media and people online think twice about they treat popular artists - and what can happen when artists are hounded. There is no doubting Dua Lipa is a massive artist who is among the hardest-working and influential of the past decade. This Billboard article documents how the iconic Kylie Minogue has nothing but praise for Lipa:
“Kylie Minogue had super high praise for her "Real Groove" collaborator Dua Lipa in an essay for Time magazine's "Next 100 Most Influential People" issue.
"Dua Lipa is a shining star, blazing a dazzling trail through the pop cosmos," wrote Minogue about Lipa, who sports a gauzy, off-the-shoulder, floor-length pink dress on the cover. "Just under four years ago, she released the first of her two albums. Today, she is dancing hand in hand with the zeitgeist, having carved with laser-like precision her place in the cultural landscape."
Minogue recalled zooming into Dua's orbit for the November gig, describing the production as "spectacular and inclusive, somehow both future and retro," with the "Don't Start Now" singer's "instantly recognizable voice stamped all over clever songwriting." Used to being the center of attention, Minogue said she enjoyed hanging out on the periphery and watching the younger star, whose famously tireless work either shone through.
"'You have to work hard to make a bit of luck,'" Minogue said Dua Lipa's father told her when she was younger. "It seems she listened. Her achievements are all the more remarkable given that she is 25 years of age".
There is no doubting Dua Lipa will be an icon of the future and she will get more popular and accomplished. With that will come more media attention and pressure. I hope that for her, and other artists in the same sort of professional and success position, that there is a change of attitude after the pandemic. Maybe this is me being naïve, but it is clear that some changes need to be made – not just in the press but on social media. I think we all hope Dua Lipa can be afforded more privacy and lead her life and career in…
HER own way.