“I’ve been a new girl all my life.”
While Dua Lipa is truly one of one, both in terms of her talent and her name, it turns out that she wasn’t always as fond of her moniker as she is today. In fact, the singer recently opened up about how she used to wish she could go by as something “normal” like “Hannah” when reflecting on her childhood during a recent appearance at the Hay Festival in Wales.
On Sunday, Lipa got candid about the difficulties that came with moving between Kosovo and London in her youth when promoting the upcoming launch of her Service95 book club at the festival. “From a young age, I had the dream to be a pop star but it never seemed like something that was actually possible,” Dua shared, per the BBC. “I’ve been a new girl all my life.”
“There was always the idea of being from two places at once,” the superstar continued. “I understood the duality of my heritage from an early age. People would always ask where my name is from. I was really proud of it, but when I was younger I wished my name was, say, Hannah — something ‘normal’ and English.”
Lipa then explained that it was this upbringing that led her to become “quite determined” to pursue music when she finished school. “I didn’t feel I had the same opportunities in music as I had in London,” she said of her decision to move back to the city after her family had moved back to Kosovo. “I was driven. My dad says I’m very hard to say no to!”
She added, “I was really persistent. I just started writing a lot, worked with a producer. I was 17. I was offered a publishing deal but [producer] Felix told me to go to a lawyer, who said, ‘Don’t sign that deal!’ They then helped me get into the studio.”
Despite her signature aesthetic, Lipa then assured the crowd that her career hasn’t always been rainbows and butterflies, adding that she found herself “difficult, early relationship in my life … with someone who had a very different idea of fidelity than I had.”
What helped her through this dark time? Simple: reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being. “[Main character] Tomas has a very unapologetic philosophy on relationships and monogamy. My philosophy never changed … but books help you understand other people’s emotions, the human experience,” she said.
