Artist

Dua Lipa

Westminster, United Kingdom · b. 1995

Dua Lipa is a musician from Westminster, United Kingdom, active since 1995. Their discography on Gatefold includes 10 records.

Start your shelf →Open in app

Albums tracked

135

In collections

1995

Since

Biography

Stephen 'KOZ' Kozmeniuk was sweating over a Juno-60 synthesizer in 2015 when he realized the bassline they were cutting for 'Be the One' was too clean. He ran it through a guitar amp to get some dirt on it. That grit saved Dua Lipa's early sessions from the sterile, plastic vocal-booth death that swallowed most mid-2010s UK pop. She did not have the massive belt of Adele or the theatrical eccentricities of Florence Welch. What she had was a heavy, smoky mezzo-soprano register that sounded like it spent its formative years in the back of a damp pub. She spent years doing the grunt work of writing rooms, grinding through ninety-odd songs before her debut LP even had a tracklist. The industry tried to pitch her as another standard-issue tropical house singer because that was what sold in 2016. She refused to play the part. Instead, she leaned into a punchy, rhythm-heavy synth-pop that gave her vocals actual room to breathe. It was a gamble that paid off because she understood something the label suits forgot. Pop music does not need to be nice, but it absolutely has to groove.

Bio from The Clerk

The Arc of Dua Lipa

The pivots — what forced Dua Lipa to reinvent.

The Dark Pop Blueprint
Between 2015 and 2017, the label was throwing everything at the wall, pairing Lipa with everyone from Martin Garrix to Wale to find a hit. The breakthrough happened when she stopped trying to match the EDM boom and wrote 'New Rules' with Ian Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick tracked the vocal in a cheap hotel room, keeping the delivery cool, detached, and rhythmically precise. That track established her signature lane: heavy, syncopated basslines underneath a deadpan, conversational vocal that felt like a late-night text thread.
The Funk-Upward Pivot
By late 2019, the moody dark-pop trend was dead, so Lipa pivoted by hiring Stuart Price and Jeff Bhasker to resurrect late-seventies disco. They locked in at Shangri-La studios, ignoring modern trap hi-hats in favor of real slap bass, live horn sections, and vintage Roland keyboards. The result was 'Future Nostalgia', an album that completely dominated the early pandemic era by sounding like a high-dollar French house record from 2001. You hear it in the title track's bassline, which moves with the aggressive, physical bounce of a chic dance floor.
The Rave and Psychedelia Shift
For her third record in 2024, 'Radical Optimism', Lipa gutted her creative team and brought in Danny L Harle from the PC Music camp alongside Kevin Parker of Tame Impala. They abandoned the slick disco strings for the UK warehouse sounds of the nineties, tracking ideas with vintage Roland TB-303 bass synthesizers. The production swapped out radio-friendly polish for acid-house filters and baggy Madchester drum beats. It was a polarising move that traded her massive radio hooks for a hypnotic, sweaty late-night club pulse.

Influences

Kylie Minogue — Lipa has repeatedly cited Minogue's seminal 2001 record 'Fever' as the primary sonic blueprint for her disco-pop era. The two shared the stage for the Studio 2054 livestream event, showcasing their shared vocal delivery style. You hear this influence in the filtered basslines and breathless, rhythmic vocal phrasing on 'Hallucinate'.
Jamiroquai — During the writing sessions for 'Future Nostalgia', Lipa kept Jamiroquai's catalog on constant rotation to study their rhythm section dynamics. The connection is direct; she hired their touring bass player, Derrick McIntyre, to track the basslines on her record. You hear his signature finger-plucked, bubbling funk style driving the title track 'Future Nostalgia'.
Nelly Furtado — Lipa has stated in multiple interviews that Furtado's Timbaland-produced masterpiece 'Loose' was the first CD she ever bought and her biggest vocal inspiration. The influence is clear in how Lipa handles her mid-tempo verses. She uses Furtado's half-spoken, rhythmic cadence rather than relying on soaring high notes.
Primal Scream — To capture the baggy, nineties indie-dance groove of her third album, Lipa and producer Andrew Wyatt studied Primal Scream's landmark album 'Screamadelica'. The influence is most apparent on 'Illusion', which utilizes the same shuffle drum beat and bright piano chords that defined the 1991 Madchester scene.
Madonna — Lipa hired producer Stuart Price specifically because of his work directing Madonna's 2005 dance-pop comeback 'Confessions on a Dance Floor'. She even brought Madonna in for a guest spot on the remix LP 'Club Future Nostalgia'. The influence is heard in the nonstop, seamless club-mix sequencing of her live sets and remixes.