Dua Lipa
Back in June, Dua Lipa found herself in a very strange place: in a London Airbnb on text chains with some of her musical heroes. It had been an eventful spring, to say the least. Her flat in the city had flooded, so she had decamped to a temporary rental. Her hotly anticipated second album, Future Nostalgia, had leaked, forcing her to move up its release date by a week. And the coronavirus pandemic threatened to upend not just her daily life but the months of work and planning she had put into the record. So you can imagine how she felt when Madonna and Missy Elliott started lighting up her phone.
Lipa, 25, had asked them to join her on a revved-up new version of her song “Levitating” for a remix edition of Future Nostalgia she was planning — and soon enough, the icons were sending over their raw vocals. “I definitely had those moments where I was like, ‘What do I say?! What should I reply?!’ ” she recalls breathlessly over Zoom one evening as she mimes typing out a message. It’s mid-November, and Lipa, dressed in a hot-pink hoodie, is a few days away from receiving six Grammy nominations — including nods for album, song and record of the year — and launching her livestream concert film, Studio 2054. (She begins our chat by announcing that she’s still a little sweaty from rehearsal.) “I still have that childlike excitement when working with my idols,” she says. “And I guess that’s just one of the things I’m so grateful for: The way the album was received is the reason why that door was open.”