Niko Moon has really clear memories. Music, cars, school. How much his parents loved each other, created a place where life was an adventure – and what you had was all you needed.

His dad, a drummer turned truck driver, loved old cars. As a boy, he remembers a Falcon, “red interior, and the carpet. The way it smelled.” He used to love to pile in with his dad, riding around, going to get donuts – and listening to music.

Like Prine, Moon’s finger is on simple things that really matter; easy joy and how to find it, loving where you are and finding ways to write about it so everyone – the really smart, the can’t be-bothered – can find their way to the bliss. It’s what Moon seeks to capture and sow in his songs.

Growing up an hour outside of Atlanta, back when it was country not exurbia, life moved at a different pace. People knew each other, took their time, shared a meal on Sunday with their family and pitched in when someone needed a hand.

Moon wanted to extract the essence of growing up in small-town Georgia. Banjo forward, swaggy back beat, guitars that tang as much as twang. Sonic tags, melodies that tumble and moments that embody all the warm welcome and friendliness that defined his life as a kid listening to his mama play Alison Krauss in her car, his debut album GOOD TIME creates an old school sort of country ethos that also drags a bit of Michael Franti, Prine, the Eagles and Outkast through songs that simmer, stir and sizzle in all the right places.

All of it turned out to be more than anyone could’ve bargained for. A musically curious kid, he remembers watching his dad practicing drums in the garage. “I got chills. I couldn’t comprehend how he was doing it,” he remembers. “I was so little, but he was in a touring regional country/rock band, had hair down to his waist. He gave it up, made the decision it was better for his family to just drive. I always respected him for that. You know, he was getting up at 4 a.m. to provide for his family.

That rhythm is shot through every track on GOOD TIME, a self-cultivated positivity starter kit. Whether the staccato/dobro punctuated laundry list of ‘can’ts’ that forms “GOOD AT LOVING YOU,” the double entendre “WAY BACK,” the slinky, finger-snapping “SMALL TOWN STATE OF MIND,” or the strummy philosophy of “WITHOUT SAYIN’ A WORD,” Moon recognizes you can’t have heart without the beat.

If the secret sauce is the alchemy, it’s been years in the slow-steeping. Not only did Moon produce Franti’s acclaimed Stay Human, Vol. 2, he’s been the secret weapon for Zac Brown for almost a decade. In love with music, the young kid caught up with the circus, “back at the Dixie Tavern on Wednesday nights, 200 people with the line wrapped around the bar and across the back. ‘Chicken Fried,’ ‘Toes,’ ‘Free,’ yes, but he would do Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Keith Whitley. And his picking, there’s always a hook built into the chord, even when he’s just playing G, C, D.”

Writing, traveling, seeing the world, Moon absorbed a precision and commitment to music that was exacting, even as it embodied simple pleasures. “Everyone in that band is so good. Spending 10 years watching them arrange and create was intense. Relentlessly authentic and refusing to adapt to other people’s ideas of what you should be was a real lesson.”

Ten years was also spent living the life.

Moon’s latest effort, COASTIN’, is available now.

One of Canada’s finest artists, Bruce Cockburn has enjoyed an illustrious career shaped by politics, spirituality, and musical diversity. His remarkable journey has seen him embrace folk, jazz, rock, and worldbeat styles while travelling to such far-flung places as Guatemala, Mali, Mozambique, and Nepal, and writing memorable songs about his ever-expanding world of wonders. “My job,” he explains, “is to try and trap the spirit of things in the scratches of pen on paper and the pulling of notes out of metal.”

That scratching and pulling has earned Cockburn high praise as an exceptional songwriter and a revered guitarist. His songs of romance, protest, and spiritual discovery are among the best to have emerged from Canada over the last 40 years. His guitar playing, both acoustic and electric, has placed him in the company of the world’s top instrumentalists. And he remains deeply respected for his activism on issues from native rights and land mines to the environment and Third World debt, working for organizations such as Oxfam, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and Friends of the Earth.

Throughout his career, Cockburn has deftly captured the joy, pain, fear, and faith of human experience in song. Whether singing about retreating to the country or going up against chaos, tackling imperialist lies or embracing ecclesiastical truths, he has always expressed a tough yet hopeful stance: to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight. “We can’t settle for things as they are,” he once warned. “If you don’t tackle the problems, they’re going to get worse.”

For his many achievements, the Ottawa-born artist has been honoured with 12 Juno Awards, an induction into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, and has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada. But he never rests on his laurels. “I’d rather think about what I’m going to do next,” says Cockburn. “My models for graceful aging are guys like John Lee Hooker and Mississippi John Hurt, who never stop working till they drop, as I fully expect to be doing, and just getting better as musicians and as human beings.”
His commitment to growth has made Bruce Cockburn both an exemplary citizen and a legendary artist whose prized songbook will be celebrated for many years to come.

When pianist Scott Bradlee started the time-twisting musical collective from a basement apartment in Queens, NY, an online, “viral” success story was born —one that quickly led to sold out shows across North America and Europe in the Summer of 2014.

The touring act received rave reviews from industry publications and world-renowned artists alike. In the years that followed, “PMJ” built a reputation as the “Saturday Night Live of Singers” by introducing audiences to dozens of exceptional musical artists —many of whom had been previously overlooked by the modern record industry — and turning them into bonafide stars.

Ten years and two billion views on their YouTube channel later, a Postmodern Jukebox show has become something of an annual musical tradition for hundreds of thousands of dedicated fans all over the world — fans that often show up dressed to the nines in their vintage best, eager to immerse themselves in the experience.

For Jesse Cook, music has been a journey. Sonically and literally.

“Over the years, I’ve taken my music and tried to cross-pollinate it with music from different parts of the world,” explains the 50-year-old global-guitar virtuoso. “For the (2003) album Nomad, I went to Cairo and recorded with musicians there. On my (2009) record The Rumba Foundation, I went to Colombia, and worked with musicians from Cuba as well. On (1998’s) Vertigo, I went down to Lafayette, La., and recorded with Buckwheat Zydeco. For me, the question has always been: Where did you go? Where did you take your guitar?”

The short answer this time? Nowhere. And everywhere. After two decades of criss-crossing the world in restless pursuit of inspiration, innovation and collaboration, the Paris-born, Toronto-raised Cook changed course for his ninth studio albumOne World, out April, 28th, 2015 on eOne Music Canada. Instead of exotic locales, he stayed home in his studio. Instead of a foreign legion of performers, he relied on his own devices. And instead of exploring cul de sacs of music — flamenco, classical, rumba, world beat, pop, blues or jazz — he united them.

“On this record, it’s not really about going someplace,” he says of the album, whose cover depicts a vast, ancient tree. “The idea is that there really is just one world. If you pull your focus back far enough, you start to see all music as being branches of the same tree. They’re all connected to the same trunk from way back.

“For example, my strange way of playing guitar is a hybrid of styles. I was a classical guitarist as a kid, and I studied flamenco and then I studied jazz. So there are three musical and guitar traditions in my background. And one of the forms I use, rumba flamenco, is itself a hybrid created in the 1800s when sailors were coming back to Spain from Cuba, having heard these Cuban rhythms. And here I am, 150 years later, taking it and mixing it back with modern music and seeing where it takes me. Music is a constantly evolving thing.”

As is Cook’s creative approach. Despite its humble home-made origins, One World begins another chapter in the multi-tasking artist, composer and producer’s quest. His destination: The digital realm. To create the disc’s emotive melodies, fluid grooves and rich sonic tapestries, he incorporated technology more than ever before. Give credit to his precocious young assistant.

“I have two small children, and my son is forever trying to get on my computer. If I’m in my studio, he’ll come in and sit down and just start pushing buttons and making things happen in the recording program I use. At first I was terrified he would mess things up. But he actually got really good at poking around. I started going, ‘Wow, what’s that? What are you doing? Let me in there!’ I started writing tunes using weird loops and metallic and electronic sounds. And I found myself interested in taking what I do and putting it in a more modern context. I’ve leaned heavily on ancient instruments. But for this record, I put those instruments side by side with modern sounds — unabashedly so.”

What results is the most sonically diverse and distinctive disc in Cook’s vast and varied catalogue, which has earned 11 Juno nominations and one win for 2000’s Free Fall. On these 11 instrumentals, programmed beats and dusty electronic textures are interwoven with syncopated handclaps, deep dubby basslines and popping percussion. Sitars and violin share the space with synthesizers and sound effects. Notes and rhythms dance playfully back and forth between speakers. Naturally, Cook’s masterful guitar work commands centre stage with its elegant balance of subtlety, in-the-moment honesty and blazing technical prowess. But here, it also pivots between worlds — past and future, familiar and fresh, acoustic and electronic — redefined by technology like every element of modern life.

“We’re all involved with our computers in a big way, though we malign them,” laughs Cook. “People complain social media is ruining communication and that people just text instead of call. But love and romance and imagination and art also happen through computers. People fall in love online. People talk to loved ones on Skype. People write great love letters on the computer, create great works of art, great compositions. It has become this integral part of human expression and I wanted to give it a voice in what I was doing.”

And in doing so, the artist who hadn’t planned to travel for this album found himself in the most exotic locale imaginable.

“I wanted to make what I was doing feel like Constantinople, the ancient city that existed between the East and the West. It was the meeting point of all these great cultures — Africa, Europe, Asia, India. I want my music to be that place: The Constantinople of sound. A place where ancient sounds meet with modern ones and pass though that port.”

The journey continues.

The man in the tree has a guitar, he’s gonna sing. But the sun shining through the branches— are those rays yellow or hazy gray? What day is today? When are you not going to feel this way again?

“Hello, Hi”: welcome in to a new room to play the styles and feels that lie under Ty Segall’s fingers, easing fresh air into acoustic space with an assortment of love songs flowering in righteous unconsciousness. Plaintive and wistful, but unafraid. Like rain washing away yesterday, “Hello, Hi” pushes open the door, inviting the new to pass through all the old shades and degrees of hot and cold. Dark paths turn off abruptly into absurd darkness, then wind back through the broken rocks, ecstatic again. Absurdity again. It happens everyday.

“Hello, Hi” is expansively rendered by Ty, mostly by himself, at home. The isolation suits the songs: you’re only ever as “at home” as you are with yourself in the mirror. Ty’s acoustic and electric guitars and vocal harmonies layer self upon self, forming a spiny backbone for the album. Textures at once gentle and dissonant root the songs as they make their move: melodic arcs convulsing in doubt and bliss and rage. Busting out of the endless gridlock into open space, these spirits pass on through.

“Hello, Hi”’s flickering awakening to this trip: the opening three tracks’ train of sweet and salty reflections, before the abrupt crunch of the title track electrifies the senses. Good morning’s turned to good mourning in nothing flat, but there’s still a way up from the doldrums, to try again. Why can’t it be just as simple as “Hello, Hi”? What to do with yourself when love triggers loathing? How many more times do you have to go back there again? Pulling at the scratchy wool threads of an old sweater favored for warmth, comfort, protection, rejection, denial, blindness etc, Ty Segall dives from a clear, open sky, down through the marine layer and the shimmering waves of all the years.

Radiating from the same mind fields as Goodbye Bread and Sleeper, mixed with shard edges of contrast and contradiction from things like Freedom’s Goblin, Manipulator, and First Taste, “Hello, Hi” is Ty’s most relaxed and complete production to date, an ebb-and flow fusion of words and music offering abstraction and acceptance as it wrestles itself through a fucked-up time. Your life and what you make of it — throughout “Hello, Hi,” Ty Segall charts a passage through its enduring tangles honestly, with clarity and confusion.

For Jesse Cook, music has been a journey. Sonically and literally.

“Over the years, I’ve taken my music and tried to cross-pollinate it with music from different parts of the world,” explains the 50-year-old global-guitar virtuoso. “For the (2003) album Nomad, I went to Cairo and recorded with musicians there. On my (2009) record The Rumba Foundation, I went to Colombia, and worked with musicians from Cuba as well. On (1998’s) Vertigo, I went down to Lafayette, La., and recorded with Buckwheat Zydeco. For me, the question has always been: Where did you go? Where did you take your guitar?”

The short answer this time? Nowhere. And everywhere. After two decades of criss-crossing the world in restless pursuit of inspiration, innovation and collaboration, the Paris-born, Toronto-raised Cook changed course for his ninth studio albumOne World, out April, 28th, 2015 on eOne Music Canada. Instead of exotic locales, he stayed home in his studio. Instead of a foreign legion of performers, he relied on his own devices. And instead of exploring cul de sacs of music — flamenco, classical, rumba, world beat, pop, blues or jazz — he united them.

“On this record, it’s not really about going someplace,” he says of the album, whose cover depicts a vast, ancient tree. “The idea is that there really is just one world. If you pull your focus back far enough, you start to see all music as being branches of the same tree. They’re all connected to the same trunk from way back.

“For example, my strange way of playing guitar is a hybrid of styles. I was a classical guitarist as a kid, and I studied flamenco and then I studied jazz. So there are three musical and guitar traditions in my background. And one of the forms I use, rumba flamenco, is itself a hybrid created in the 1800s when sailors were coming back to Spain from Cuba, having heard these Cuban rhythms. And here I am, 150 years later, taking it and mixing it back with modern music and seeing where it takes me. Music is a constantly evolving thing.”

As is Cook’s creative approach. Despite its humble home-made origins, One World begins another chapter in the multi-tasking artist, composer and producer’s quest. His destination: The digital realm. To create the disc’s emotive melodies, fluid grooves and rich sonic tapestries, he incorporated technology more than ever before. Give credit to his precocious young assistant.

“I have two small children, and my son is forever trying to get on my computer. If I’m in my studio, he’ll come in and sit down and just start pushing buttons and making things happen in the recording program I use. At first I was terrified he would mess things up. But he actually got really good at poking around. I started going, ‘Wow, what’s that? What are you doing? Let me in there!’ I started writing tunes using weird loops and metallic and electronic sounds. And I found myself interested in taking what I do and putting it in a more modern context. I’ve leaned heavily on ancient instruments. But for this record, I put those instruments side by side with modern sounds — unabashedly so.”

What results is the most sonically diverse and distinctive disc in Cook’s vast and varied catalogue, which has earned 11 Juno nominations and one win for 2000’s Free Fall. On these 11 instrumentals, programmed beats and dusty electronic textures are interwoven with syncopated handclaps, deep dubby basslines and popping percussion. Sitars and violin share the space with synthesizers and sound effects. Notes and rhythms dance playfully back and forth between speakers. Naturally, Cook’s masterful guitar work commands centre stage with its elegant balance of subtlety, in-the-moment honesty and blazing technical prowess. But here, it also pivots between worlds — past and future, familiar and fresh, acoustic and electronic — redefined by technology like every element of modern life.

“We’re all involved with our computers in a big way, though we malign them,” laughs Cook. “People complain social media is ruining communication and that people just text instead of call. But love and romance and imagination and art also happen through computers. People fall in love online. People talk to loved ones on Skype. People write great love letters on the computer, create great works of art, great compositions. It has become this integral part of human expression and I wanted to give it a voice in what I was doing.”

And in doing so, the artist who hadn’t planned to travel for this album found himself in the most exotic locale imaginable.

“I wanted to make what I was doing feel like Constantinople, the ancient city that existed between the East and the West. It was the meeting point of all these great cultures — Africa, Europe, Asia, India. I want my music to be that place: The Constantinople of sound. A place where ancient sounds meet with modern ones and pass though that port.”

The journey continues.

The man in the tree has a guitar, he’s gonna sing. But the sun shining through the branches— are those rays yellow or hazy gray? What day is today? When are you not going to feel this way again?

“Hello, Hi”: welcome in to a new room to play the styles and feels that lie under Ty Segall’s fingers, easing fresh air into acoustic space with an assortment of love songs flowering in righteous unconsciousness. Plaintive and wistful, but unafraid. Like rain washing away yesterday, “Hello, Hi” pushes open the door, inviting the new to pass through all the old shades and degrees of hot and cold. Dark paths turn off abruptly into absurd darkness, then wind back through the broken rocks, ecstatic again. Absurdity again. It happens everyday.

“Hello, Hi” is expansively rendered by Ty, mostly by himself, at home. The isolation suits the songs: you’re only ever as “at home” as you are with yourself in the mirror. Ty’s acoustic and electric guitars and vocal harmonies layer self upon self, forming a spiny backbone for the album. Textures at once gentle and dissonant root the songs as they make their move: melodic arcs convulsing in doubt and bliss and rage. Busting out of the endless gridlock into open space, these spirits pass on through.

“Hello, Hi”’s flickering awakening to this trip: the opening three tracks’ train of sweet and salty reflections, before the abrupt crunch of the title track electrifies the senses. Good morning’s turned to good mourning in nothing flat, but there’s still a way up from the doldrums, to try again. Why can’t it be just as simple as “Hello, Hi”? What to do with yourself when love triggers loathing? How many more times do you have to go back there again? Pulling at the scratchy wool threads of an old sweater favored for warmth, comfort, protection, rejection, denial, blindness etc, Ty Segall dives from a clear, open sky, down through the marine layer and the shimmering waves of all the years.

Radiating from the same mind fields as Goodbye Bread and Sleeper, mixed with shard edges of contrast and contradiction from things like Freedom’s Goblin, Manipulator, and First Taste, “Hello, Hi” is Ty’s most relaxed and complete production to date, an ebb-and flow fusion of words and music offering abstraction and acceptance as it wrestles itself through a fucked-up time. Your life and what you make of it — throughout “Hello, Hi,” Ty Segall charts a passage through its enduring tangles honestly, with clarity and confusion.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Don’t believe everything you see on TV: Olly Murs has been away.

For sure, the singer, songwriter and solid-gold pop star has been all over our screens in recent weeks and months. He’s been front and centre as host of ITV’s Starstruck, helping the public make real their musical dreams, with wing-persons assistance from the likes of Shania Twain, Ronan Keating and Beverley Knight.

Then, he returned to the big swivelly chair on The Voice. Appearing alongside fellow coaches Anne-Marie, Sir Tom Jones and will.i.am in the current run, this is his fifth consecutive season on the hit talent show.

But in the artist world – the world that forged him, where he burnished the creative credentials that makes him an invaluable part of those musical shows – Murs has been off the radar for over four years. For a musician who had four Number One singles and four Number One albums in a near-back-to-back run after bursting onto the scene with his double-platinum self-titled debut in 2010, that’s a big gap.

But as he matter-of-factly admits, after the release of 2018’s sixth album You Know I Know (a double that was half greatest hits, half new tracks) he needed a rest. And a reset. The result is Olly Murs’ most consistent, most ambitious, punchiest, poppiest – and, in places, proudly soppiest – album yet.

It’s the Essex-machine at his happiest, too. How do we know? The clue’s in the title: Marry Me. The answer? Hint: she said yes. But before we get to that…

“I won’t lie,” Murs begins. “I was against doing the hits album. That's why I made it a double album – the songs you know, the songs that I know. Because I just wasn't ready for a hits album at that point in my career.”

As it happened, he then needed time to rebuild himself, personally and professionally. Firstly, after the 2019 You Know I Know tour, this keen footballer needed knee surgery. Secondly, he decided it was time to work with a fresh team, leaving Sony to sign a new record deal with EMI/Universal.

“It was just a weird time for me,” he reflects. “I was still single, personal life was a little bit all over the place… Work life was good, overall, but with that album campaign, my heart wasn't really in it. But my heart's in it now.”

That cardiac boost came from multiple directions. Firstly, Murs’ ears lit up when he was sent a work-in-progress track by songwriter David Stewart. 'Die Of A Broken Heart' needed a second verse, and a proper vocal, but he could hear that this was a smash-in-waiting.

“I went to David’s studio in West London and we got into the writing together. That was really the start and the spearhead of everything. It gave me a direction of where the album could go.”

'Die Of A Broken Heart' would become the first track on the album, and the first single. From the opening notes, you can hear why – this is an instant ear-worm, a one-listen-and-you’re-hooked pop-reggae outlier. As Murs describes it: “It has that steel drum at the intro, which just gets in your head straight away. It has a very Gotye, ‘Somebody I Used to Know’ feel to it, with a touch of The Police – and just a coolness to it. That really excited me.”

So much so that Murs decided to dive deep and commit. Forging an instant connection with Stewart, and with the producer and multi-instrumentalist’s songwriting partner Jessica Agombar, Murs ripped up entirely the creative process that had previously worked brilliantly for him.

“I've done all my albums with lots of producers over the years, predominantly Steve Robson, Claude Kelly, Steve Mac, Wayne Hector, guys I've had great relationships and success with. But David just had a BTS hit with their song ‘Dynamite’, stuff with Jonas Brothers, DNCE, more stuff with BTS, and he'd just done the new Shania Twain record…”

So he jumped in, committing to writing and recording the album solely with David Stewart and Jessica Agombar. “I've never done this before. It felt weird writing with the same people constantly. But I loved the routine, and the consistency. We just kept writing good songs.

“They are in the mix right now,” he continues. “They just had a great vibe and an enthusiasm, and a hunger. They’ve just had a Billboard number one, a number one in over 100 countries. That enthusiasm and energy that I got from them, that was it. That was the start.”

The start, but no starting pistol: Murs was determined not to race to the finish. Even though, again, that was something that had paid dividends in the past.

“Previous albums, I've done them in 12 weeks, 10 weeks, sometimes eight weeks, nonstop, jumping from studio to studio, benefiting from that injection of enthusiasm from someone new, that new producer, that new room – new lunch menu!"

But to craft the tight set of 11 songs that would become Marry Me, he took the best part of two years, working a week here, and a week there.

“And we had space,” he adds. “That’s the best thing about this album: we were patient. We didn't waste time. We took our time. And when it felt good, we finished the song. When it didn't feel good, we moved on. There was no pressure.”

Murs met his partner in 2019, another big change. This life-changing jolt is reflected in another new song. ‘I Found Her’ is a big tune with big energy and a big, soaring synth line.

“I was hearing Eighties-sounding songs in the charts like what The Weeknd was doing,” remembers this keen student of pop music. “That's where that big energy you’re describing came from, all dramatic and Eighties-like. We wrote the song based on my partner – or any woman. She's at the centre of the earth, and all these superheroes are trying to get to her. But if the world ends, at least – at last – I've found her.

“We wanted that bounce in the chorus, and that Jagger or Bowie strut, me with my chest out – I can imagine me in a sequinned onesie,” he hoots, as if storyboarding a video for what is surely a nailed-on single. “Yeah, we had fun writing that one.”

Also bringing the good-time party vibes is ‘Dancing on Cars’, a tune with an exuberant ‘Pull Up To The Bumper’ feel. And if you’re gonna tap into anyone’s funky vibe, Grace Jones is the one, right?

“This is the only one I didn't write. David said, ‘look, I wrote this fucking banger and I think it would work perfectly on the album.’ It's got that, again, modern funk feel – but my granddad would love to dance to it because it's got that old ’70s funk in it, with brass. It just ticks all the boxes. And I like the idea of me dancing on a car!” he hoots, scripting yet another surely inevitable iconic video moment.

Then, after the dancing and the partying, the romance. Rounding out Marry Me is ‘Let Me Just Say’. The album’s closing track is the only ballad, and offers not just a showcase for Murs’ effortlessly classy voice but also for his deepest emotions.

“It was probably the last song we wrote on the album, and you can probably tell at that point I was engaged,” he acknowledges. “So it's almost a story, really – the whole album is the two years leading up to me proposing. This is the final song on the album, and it's written as if the lights are down low, we’re on the dancefloor for our wedding, looking at each other…”

...and, fade to marital bliss. “That's the most open I’ve ever written,” Murs admits, clearly high on being able to honour and immortalise his bride-to-be in this way. “That's genuine love. But as for ‘Marry Me’ itself,” he adds of the finger-snapping, hip-shaking, dance floor-ready title track, “that's more my cheeky side. I’m saying: I think it's time you married me, really!’”

It’s sure to have them dancing – if not proposing – in the aisles next year, when Olly Murs gets back on tour. Last time round he sold 180,000 tickets for UK arenas in 2019. He’s determined to go bigger, better, louder next time in a show that will, he thinks, open with another new track. The Greatest Showman-esque ‘The Best Night of Your Life’ features strings by the legendary Mike Batt (who also appears on two other tracks), and the larky lyrics reference songs by other great showmen he rates, notably Elton John and Robbie Williams. "I can already see me on stage doing that one," nods this natural-born stage performer.

To celebrate 40 years as a solo artist, Alison Moyet releases Key, a collection of 16 reworked singles and deep cuts, alongside two brand new tracks

It is, says Alison Moyet, quite remarkable to think that she’s been singing for “some serious years”. She formed her first band at 16 in Basildon, was in Yazoo at 20 and released her first solo album Alf at 23. In the four decades since Alf, Moyet’s solo work has been defined not only by her refusal to repeat herself, but by that extraordinary voice: still recognisable in an instant, still capable of stopping you in your tracks, a voice big enough to fill a stadium and yet intimate enough to make you feel as though she’s singing just for you.

Key is a blazing showcase of the depth and breadth of Moyet’s song writing ability that unlocks who she is as a creative artist. With nine studio solo albums to choose from to celebrate her fortieth year as a solo artist, Moyet wanted “to look at the trajectory of those decades and explore songs that, in their original form, were never fully realised or have had their relevance to me altered by time.”

There are inevitably certain songs Moyet won’t sing again simply because they “don’t resonate with me anymore.” Perhaps because she was on the cusp of adulthood when she originally sang them or hadn’t yet had her heart broken. Perhaps they are cover songs that she “doesn’t recognise as part of my language now.” No matter: for Key she took to the studio with Sean McGhee, her long-standing musical director for live shows and producer and arranger across all the songs on the new album. It was a gargantuan task which included readdressing fan favourites such as Love Resurrection and All Cried Out, both from Alf. Meanwhile, Is This Love?, from the 1986 album Raindancing, co-written with Dave Stewart and featured in the BAFTA-nominated film All of Us Strangers, has been reworked as a giant shimmering ballad.

In Yazoo, Moyet largely wrote on her own, with the exception of Situation and State Farm, which were crafted with Vince Clarke. As a solo artist, she has collaborated with myriad songwriters and producers. Working with Steve Jolley and Tony Swain on Alf was “a new and interesting experience unhindered by the burden of experience”, but it was her significant work with Pete Glenister that would identify her melodic and lyrical imperatives as a solo artist. “Pete is a supremely talented fellow who constructs sublime chord progressions and is a truly fine writer.” The Insects, producers of 2002’s Hometime, later created a perfect sound bed to showcase the Moyet/Glenister songs. “That was my first personal experience of finding synergy on an album; it was an important career shape shifter.”

It was, however, with Guy Sigsworth that Moyet found her perfect foil. “In many ways he has been reward for my dogged endurance. I’m totally unbound when working with Guy. He writes tracks that I then write songs to. No ‘what to do?’ No preamble. A creative trust. We allow each our own language.” The two albums made with Sigsworth – the minutes from 2013 and Other from 2017 – Moyet considers highlights of her career. Key includes two reworkings from those records, All Signs of Life and Filigree. “My work with Guy needed to be referenced, but didn’t demand alteration. That said, Sean has arranged an exquisite take on Filigree quite unlike all the rest. It’s a song about perseverance, which is really quite fitting.”

The two new songs on Key – the lavish Such Small Ale and exquisite pop of The Impervious Me – were written respectively with Sean McGhee and co-writers Richard Oakes and John Garden. “I wanted to write the new material with Sean because so very much of him is on Key. He produced and arranged all 18 tracks. A ridiculous polymath.”

With touring stalled by the lockdown years – Moyet enrolled at Brighton University and graduated with a first-class degree in Fine Art Printmaking BA (Hons) in the summer of 2023 – she is keen to take Key on the road. “Live work really matters to me,” she says. “I can’t dial in a performance. I love the physical feeling that singing gives me. It’s totally primal and euphoric. On stage I remember how to connect with myself.”

Key distils 40 years of music making, presenting a cohesive overview of a long and dazzling journey. “I hope this collection will be the key to those unopened doors. Let yourself in.”

Maribou State are Chris Davids and Liam Ivory, the UK duo giving electronic music a
much-needed shot of soul. Since 2011, they’ve established themselves as major
players on the global dance music circuit, melding a genre-fluid range of influences into
a distinctly organic sound, redefining downtempo electronica for a new generation.
They’ve become a hugely acclaimed live act who’ve performed roadblock shows from
Glastonbury to the Sydney Opera House, as well as back-to-back sold-out UK, EU and
North American tours.
Over three albums – including a new, forthcoming release – Maribou State have honed
a delicate balance of intricacy, intimacy and electronic expansiveness. Their vast sonic
universe pulls on UK club music, vintage soul and evocative samples to create
something completely unique. Their 2015 debut, Portraits, was written and recorded in
the shed at the bottom of Liam’s parents’ garden in leafy Hertfordshire, just outside of
London, where the duo both grew up. Building on Portrait’s success, Maribou State
relocated to the UK capital but looked further afield for inspiration: 2018’s Kingdom of
Colour wove together a sonic collage of ideas and field recordings from their travels
across India, Australia, Morocco, America and beyond. Lead single ‘Feel Good’, a
collaboration with Texan trio Khruangbin, was a runaway success, while the album itself
was released to widespread acclaim. It led dance music bible Mixmag to crown Maribou
State one of their artists of the year.
The duo have always stayed true to their club roots: they started DJing together in the
mid-2000s and pay homage to the lineage of UK dance music throughout their
productions, such as the much-loved single ‘Turnmills’, named for the legendary former
London club. They followed it with 2019’s Kingdoms In Colour Remixed, featuring
reworkings from the likes of HAAi, Maceo Plex and DJ Tennis and, in 2020, an
instalment of Fabric’s esteemed Fabric Presents series. The compilation evidenced their
wide-reaching music tastes and linked soul, disco and bumpier house grooves with UK
jazz and even neo-classical.
Maribou State’s live show has simultaneously evolved to the next level, where they
have become must-see headliners. Their band has come to its fullest realisation on their
new and third album, Hallucinating Love. It’s a beacon of hopefulness after a turbulent
past few years both personally and professionally, where Chris has been coming to
terms with a major brain condition, bringing the duo closer together than ever before.
The hotly-anticipated release brings together a host of impressive talents, including
vocalists Holly Walker and Andreya Triana, and incredibly talented producer Jack
Sibley, for a celebration of community, togetherness and triumphing against the odds.
Hallucinating Love is preceded by two exceptional singles, and soothing balms for
tempestuous times. ‘Blackoak’ typifies Maribou State’s earthy blend of folk, epic strings,
elastic funk bass and earworm vocal hooks, plus ‘Otherside’ which features long-term
collaborator and vocalist Holly Walker. It’s a complex tapestry of sound, but one that
always brings heart and soul to the forefront.

Grammy-winning artist Allison Russell is a weaver of stories and tales through the medium of music. Since the release of her first solo album three years ago, the self-taught singer, songwriter, poet, activist, and multi-instrumentalist has redefined what artistry means in the 21st century. From her devastatingly moving celebration of survivors' joy through Outside Child to the body-shaking, mind-expanding, soulful expression of Black liberation that is The Returner, Russell’s music exceeds all reasonable (and unreasonable) expectations and affirms her place among today’s most vital artists.

Various honors include her Grammy win for Best American Roots Performance for the powerful single “Eve Was Black” alongside 7 additional nominations, the Juno Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year, the Americana Music Association’s 2023 Spirit of Americana Award & 2022 Album of the Year Award, two International Folk Music Awards, three Canadian Folk Music Awards, and four UK Americana Music Awards.

Alongside the Rainbow Coalition Band - a talented ensemble of Black and POC, queer, and historically marginalized musicians from across the U.S. - Russell uses the power of music in order to spread her message of the “Beloved Community” and is dedicated to lifting others upwards as her own star climbs higher.

Allison Russell — poet, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, activist, and co-founder of Our Native Daughters and Birds of Chicago — embarks upon her next chapter in The Returner, a body-shaking, mind-expanding, soulful expression of Black liberation, Black love, of Black self-respect. Written and co-produced by Allison along with dim star (her partner JT Nero and Drew Lindsay), The Returner was recorded over Solstice week in December 2022 at Henson Recording Studios in Los Angeles, CA. It features Russell's "Rainbow Coalition" band of all female musicians along with special guest appearances from the legendary Wendy & Lisa, Brandi Carlile, Brandy Clark, and Hozier.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Hippo Campus were sitting in the green room of a sold-out amphitheater show at the start of the Summer of 2023 when they realized they had a major problem. Their fourth LP simply wasn’t good enough. Singer Jake Luppen had been listening to the band’s work as they rolled around the country, trying to tease out how much work remained. All of it, he soon decided. The soul wasn’t there, obfuscated by the need to sound sophisticated and the overwhelming ambition to make the best Hippo Campus LP ever, adeeper and more profound record that reflected how their lives were changing.

They’d committed to that vow with longtime producer and collaborator Caleb Wright a little more than a year earlier, soon after a party where they celebrated the release of LP3. That very night, the call came that a longtime friend had unexpectedly died. They started this band as kids and enjoyed quick momentum, their thrill-a-minute live shows and charismatically experimental pop albums creating almost-instant, avid attention. But this was Hippo Campus’ first close brush with death; as adulthood encroached, the actual call of mortality reminded them of the stakes of art, friendship, and life.

So they committed to doing something major, even if it meant taking five years to do it. They took the task seriously, too: getting sober for an entirely improvisational session at North Carolina’s Drop of Sun months later, regularly attending therapy as a full band, writing more than 100 songs in only a year. That was all well and good, until Luppen and, really, all of Hippo Campus decided they didn’t actually like what they were making. Life and work had been dark in their orbit for a second—death and dejection, addiction and anxiety. This uneasy epiphany wasn’t helping.

So that night, in the dressing room, they called an audible. They were going to start over. Three months later, the four-member core of Hippo Campus rendezvoused with Wright and producer Brad Cook at Sonic Ranch, a playground-like studio complex on the Texas border. They gave themselves 10 days to cut the tracks they liked best, to make something to which they could commit at last. And Cook, in turn, gave them an edict of no second guessing or listening back, only forward momentum. Less than two weeks later, they emerged with what they’d given themselves half a decade to make—Flood, or the best album Hippo Campus has ever made.

You can immediately hear as much in a pair of wondrous songs toward the end, when the love-lost-and-found sing-along “Forget It” fades into the bittersweet and beautiful ache of “Closer,” a gem about trying and maybe failing to surrender your trust to someone else. This is a band that has learned to grow up by learning to let go. When Hippo Campus finally stopped trying to force the issue of making a masterpiece, they tapped intersecting veins of vulnerability and urgency, walking away with 13 tracks that reckon with their uncanny lives through at least that many totally absorbing hooks.

During the last several years, Hippo Campus has had to navigate the tougher wages of success. They are, of course, grateful that a pop band they named on the lark of some psychology lesson blew up, but it certainly eliminated the segue from adolescence to adulthood that most of us enjoy in relative privacy. How could they survive inside and alongside this thing they had created and had outgrown them? And what’s more, how could they endure the vagaries of the music industry, so that they didn’t let a disappointing tour or disspiriting release demoralize them? Or, to ask the cumulative question, how do four people connected so intimately for so long grow as individuals while preserving the bond that makes what they do so special? Or is that actually too much to ask?

For a minute there, the answer seemed possibly like yes. But soon after that improvisational session, the band returned to its own Minneapolis studio and dug in. They stumbled upon “Everything at Once,” with Nathan Stocker’s tricky little guitar lope becoming the basis for the slowly rising rhythm of drummer Whistler Allen and bassist Zach Sutton. Stepping outside for some space, Luppen quickly penned a thesis of self-criticism and self-forgiveness. Being less than the expectations of an industry, a family, or a faith are totally normal, he suggests in an anthem of empowerment that is almost casual. He gives himself the grace of being human: “You gotta lay down sometimes, be patient sometimes,” Luppen sings, layers of lean vocals crisscrossing one another like light beams. “And feel everything at once.”

That is precisely what Hippo Campus do best on Flood—feel everything and transmute it all into songs that are inescapable. Take “Brand New,” three minutes of brilliantly coiled pop, its spring-loaded rhythm lifting a guitar line built from pin pricks skyward. It’s about being ruined by the letdown of a failed relationship and then finding a way forward, toward something so good you haven’t even imagined it yet. It sounds that way, too. There’s the completely compulsive “Tooth Fairy,” a quick-moving meditation on the confusion of interpersonal dynamics. Hippo Campus smear bits of gentle psychedelia around a rhythm, riff, and hook that have the sleek lines of a sports car; the result is a dynamic wonder, a song that feels emphatic at the start but reaches full triumph by the end. Inspired by staring down cycles of addiction too long without taking steps to break them, “Corduroy” finds the space between a bummer country blues and a sweetly devotional waltz. Its vows of love, trust, and doubt are buoyed and also undercut by its slow rises and falls, a musical portrait of trying to take that difficult next step.

The sentiments on Flood are raw, real, and unguarded, a testament to Hippo Campus dropping preconceptions of how they had to sound after so many failed attempts to re-record these songs. They wiped the slate clean, starting over without beliefs about what Hippo Campus or this record needed to be. Still, sophistication lurks in subtle key and tempo changes, in the almost innate shifts that a band of longtime best friends can tap after so much time spent helping to shape one another’s musical language. Flood doesn’t need to tell you it’s important or interesting; it simply is, just by virtue of how it’s written, built, and rendered, a map of what it’s like to feel everything at once. This rebirth is accompanied by a crucial career shift for Hippo Campus, too, as they exit the traditional label system to issue LP4 via Psychic Hotline, a truly independent imprint run by peers and pals. If you’re working to let go of expectations, why not jettison them all? There’s a bravery to that, and you can hear its revivifying spirit in every second of LP4.

Early into the endlessly propulsive “Paranoid,” where stunted acoustic strums undergird an inescapable jangle, Luppen asks an existential question: “Is there something waiting out there for us at the finish line?” For the next three minutes, the band cycles with him through his woes, from the title’s overwhelming worry to notions of dislocation and loneliness. (Also, is there any other refrain ever that manages to make the phrase “so god-damned fucking” sound so catchy and natural?) But in the final verse, with his voice breaking through a scrim of distortion, he stumbles upon a new credo: “Wait, I wanna give this life all that I have in me.” That is precisely what Hippo Campus have done with Flood after realizing it doesn’t take a lifetime—or, well, five years—to do just that.

The Jesus Lizard formed in late 80's Austin, TX after David Yow (vox) and David Wm. Sims' (bass) previous band Scratch Acid broke up. They started the Jesus Lizard with Duane Denison (guitar) and a drum machine and recorded their debut EP Pure with Steve Albini in 1989. A move to Chicago prompted the firing of the drum machine in favor of Mac McNeilly (drums) and in 1990 the band recorded their first fulllength, Head, for Touch and Go.

While the labels "seminal" and "legendary" are often applied too easily, they both accurately describe the Jesus Lizard. They released five more remarkable LPs before disbanding in 1999, the last being 1998's Blue. During that time, they toured endlessly and issued not only the critically acclaimed studio LPs but also assorted singles, EPs, compilations and a live album. Pitchfork has said of them: "the Jesus Lizard raised a bar that few bands have reached since...Rarely does a band have each member adding something essential to such a united, ferocious whole."

December's tour will no doubt remind everyone that the Jesus Lizard excelled not only in the studio but on stage. The band is indeed matchless in that capacity. Stereogum have called them "one of the greatest live bands ever" and The New York Times has used the words "extravagantly good" while Rolling Stone speaks of the band's "shattering live performances."

2008 saw the band regroup and the following year they toured the world with dates that included a slot at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago and All Tomorrow's Parties in the UK and upstate New York. No plans exist for any performances beyond this December slate.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

ABBA Voyage is the long-awaited concert from one of the biggest pop acts of all time. Featuring a setlist of hit songs, see ABBA’s avatars accompanied by a 10-piece live band, at the custom-built ABBA Arena in London.

Blurring the lines between the physical and digital, see the magic of ABBA brought to life using the latest in motion capture technology.

It’s the greatest ABBA performance the world has never seen. Until now.

Hippo Campus were sitting in the green room of a sold-out amphitheater show at the start of the
Summer of 2023 when they realized they had a major problem. Their fourth LP simply wasn’t
good enough. Singer Jake Luppen had been listening to the band’s work as they rolled around
the country, trying to tease out how much work remained. All of it, he soon decided. The soul
wasn’t there, obfuscated by the need to sound sophisticated and the overwhelming ambition to
make the best Hippo Campus LP ever, a deeper and more profound record that reflected how
their lives were changing.
They’d committed to that vow with longtime producer and collaborator Caleb Wright a little
more than a year earlier, soon after a party where they celebrated the release of LP3. That very
night, the call came that a longtime friend had unexpectedly died. They started this band as kids
and enjoyed quick momentum, their thrill-a-minute live shows and charismatically experimental
pop albums creating almost-instant, avid attention. But this was Hippo Campus’ first close brush
with death; as adulthood encroached, the actual call of mortality reminded them of the stakes of
art, friendship, and life.
So they committed to doing something major, even if it meant taking five years to do it. They
took the task seriously, too: getting sober for an entirely improvisational session at North
Carolina’s Drop of Sun months later, regularly attending therapy as a full band, writing more
than 100 songs in only a year. That was all well and good, until Luppen and, really, all of Hippo
Campus decided they didn’t actually like what they were making. Life and work had been dark
in their orbit for a second—death and dejection, addiction and anxiety. This uneasy epiphany
wasn’t helping.
So that night, in the dressing room, they called an audible. They were going to start over. Three
months later, the four-member core of Hippo Campus rendezvoused with Wright and producer
Brad Cook at Sonic Ranch, a playground-like studio complex on the Texas border. They gave
themselves 10 days to cut the tracks they liked best, to make something to which they could
commit at last. And Cook, in turn, gave them an edict of no second guessing or listening back,
only forward momentum. Less than two weeks later, they emerged with what they’d given
themselves half a decade to make—Flood, or the best album Hippo Campus has ever made.
You can immediately hear as much in a pair of wondrous songs toward the end, when the love-
lost-and-found sing-along “Forget It” fades into the bittersweet and beautiful ache of “Closer,” a
gem about trying and maybe failing to surrender your trust to someone else. This is a band that
has learned to grow up by learning to let go. When Hippo Campus finally stopped trying to force
the issue of making a masterpiece, they tapped intersecting veins of vulnerability and urgency,
walking away with 13 tracks that reckon with their uncanny lives through at least that many
totally absorbing hooks.
During the last several years, Hippo Campus has had to navigate the tougher wages of success.
They are, of course, grateful that a pop band they named on the lark of some psychology lesson
blew up, but it certainly eliminated the segue from adolescence to adulthood that most of us
enjoy in relative privacy. How could they survive inside and alongside this thing they had created
and had outgrown them? And what’s more, how could they endure the vagaries of the music
industry, so that they didn’t let a disappointing tour or disspiriting release demoralize them? Or,
to ask the cumulative question, how do four people connected so intimately for so long grow as
individuals while preserving the bond that makes what they do so special? Or is that actually too
much to ask?
For a minute there, the answer seemed possibly like yes. But soon after that improvisational
session, the band returned to its own Minneapolis studio and dug in. They stumbled upon
“Everything at Once,” with Nathan Stocker’s tricky little guitar lope becoming the basis for the
slowly rising rhythm of drummer Whistler Allen and bassist Zach Sutton. Stepping outside for
some space, Luppen quickly penned a thesis of self-criticism and self-forgiveness. Being less
than the expectations of an industry, a family, or a faith are totally normal, he suggests in an
anthem of empowerment that is almost casual. He gives himself the grace of being human: “You
gotta lay down sometimes, be patient sometimes,” Luppen sings, layers of lean vocals
crisscrossing one another like light beams. “And feel everything at once.”
That is precisely what Hippo Campus do best on Flood—feel everything and transmute it all into
songs that are inescapable. Take “Brand New,” three minutes of brilliantly coiled pop, its spring-
loaded rhythm lifting a guitar line built from pin pricks skyward. It’s about being ruined by the
letdown of a failed relationship and then finding a way forward, toward something so good you
haven’t even imagined it yet. It sounds that way, too. There’s the completely compulsive “Tooth
Fairy,” a quick-moving meditation on the confusion of interpersonal dynamics. Hippo Campus
smear bits of gentle psychedelia around a rhythm, riff, and hook that have the sleek lines of a
sports car; the result is a dynamic wonder, a song that feels emphatic at the start but reaches full
triumph by the end. Inspired by staring down cycles of addiction too long without taking steps to
break them, “Corduroy” finds the space between a bummer country blues and a sweetly
devotional waltz. Its vows of love, trust, and doubt are buoyed and also undercut by its slow rises
and falls, a musical portrait of trying to take that difficult next step.
The sentiments on Flood are raw, real, and unguarded, a testament to Hippo Campus dropping
preconceptions of how they had to sound after so many failed attempts to re-record these songs.
They wiped the slate clean, starting over without beliefs about what Hippo Campus or this record
needed to be. Still, sophistication lurks in subtle key and tempo changes, in the almost innate
shifts that a band of longtime best friends can tap after so much time spent helping to shape one
another’s musical language. Flood doesn’t need to tell you it’s important or interesting; it simply
is, just by virtue of how it’s written, built, and rendered, a map of what it’s like to feel everything
at once. This rebirth is accompanied by a crucial career shift for Hippo Campus, too, as they exit
the traditional label system to issue LP4 via Psychic Hotline, a truly independent imprint run by
peers and pals. If you’re working to let go of expectations, why not jettison them all? There’s a
bravery to that, and you can hear its revivifying spirit in every second of LP4.
Early into the endlessly propulsive “Paranoid,” where stunted acoustic strums undergird an
inescapable jangle, Luppen asks an existential question: “Is there something waiting out there for
us at the finish line?” For the next three minutes, the band cycles with him through his woes,
from the title’s overwhelming worry to notions of dislocation and loneliness. (Also, is there any
other refrain ever that manages to make the phrase “so god-damned fucking” sound so catchy
and natural?) But in the final verse, with his voice breaking through a scrim of distortion, he
stumbles upon a new credo: “Wait, I wanna give this life all that I have in me.” That is precisely
what Hippo Campus have done with Flood after realizing it doesn’t take a lifetime—or, well,
five years—to do just that.

Hippo Campus were sitting in the green room of a sold-out amphitheater show at the start of the
Summer of 2023 when they realized they had a major problem. Their fourth LP simply wasn’t
good enough. Singer Jake Luppen had been listening to the band’s work as they rolled around
the country, trying to tease out how much work remained. All of it, he soon decided. The soul
wasn’t there, obfuscated by the need to sound sophisticated and the overwhelming ambition to
make the best Hippo Campus LP ever, a deeper and more profound record that reflected how
their lives were changing.
They’d committed to that vow with longtime producer and collaborator Caleb Wright a little
more than a year earlier, soon after a party where they celebrated the release of LP3. That very
night, the call came that a longtime friend had unexpectedly died. They started this band as kids
and enjoyed quick momentum, their thrill-a-minute live shows and charismatically experimental
pop albums creating almost-instant, avid attention. But this was Hippo Campus’ first close brush
with death; as adulthood encroached, the actual call of mortality reminded them of the stakes of
art, friendship, and life.
So they committed to doing something major, even if it meant taking five years to do it. They
took the task seriously, too: getting sober for an entirely improvisational session at North
Carolina’s Drop of Sun months later, regularly attending therapy as a full band, writing more
than 100 songs in only a year. That was all well and good, until Luppen and, really, all of Hippo
Campus decided they didn’t actually like what they were making. Life and work had been dark
in their orbit for a second—death and dejection, addiction and anxiety. This uneasy epiphany
wasn’t helping.
So that night, in the dressing room, they called an audible. They were going to start over. Three
months later, the four-member core of Hippo Campus rendezvoused with Wright and producer
Brad Cook at Sonic Ranch, a playground-like studio complex on the Texas border. They gave
themselves 10 days to cut the tracks they liked best, to make something to which they could
commit at last. And Cook, in turn, gave them an edict of no second guessing or listening back,
only forward momentum. Less than two weeks later, they emerged with what they’d given
themselves half a decade to make—Flood, or the best album Hippo Campus has ever made.
You can immediately hear as much in a pair of wondrous songs toward the end, when the love-
lost-and-found sing-along “Forget It” fades into the bittersweet and beautiful ache of “Closer,” a
gem about trying and maybe failing to surrender your trust to someone else. This is a band that
has learned to grow up by learning to let go. When Hippo Campus finally stopped trying to force
the issue of making a masterpiece, they tapped intersecting veins of vulnerability and urgency,
walking away with 13 tracks that reckon with their uncanny lives through at least that many
totally absorbing hooks.
During the last several years, Hippo Campus has had to navigate the tougher wages of success.
They are, of course, grateful that a pop band they named on the lark of some psychology lesson
blew up, but it certainly eliminated the segue from adolescence to adulthood that most of us
enjoy in relative privacy. How could they survive inside and alongside this thing they had created
and had outgrown them? And what’s more, how could they endure the vagaries of the music
industry, so that they didn’t let a disappointing tour or disspiriting release demoralize them? Or,
to ask the cumulative question, how do four people connected so intimately for so long grow as
individuals while preserving the bond that makes what they do so special? Or is that actually too
much to ask?
For a minute there, the answer seemed possibly like yes. But soon after that improvisational
session, the band returned to its own Minneapolis studio and dug in. They stumbled upon
“Everything at Once,” with Nathan Stocker’s tricky little guitar lope becoming the basis for the
slowly rising rhythm of drummer Whistler Allen and bassist Zach Sutton. Stepping outside for
some space, Luppen quickly penned a thesis of self-criticism and self-forgiveness. Being less
than the expectations of an industry, a family, or a faith are totally normal, he suggests in an
anthem of empowerment that is almost casual. He gives himself the grace of being human: “You
gotta lay down sometimes, be patient sometimes,” Luppen sings, layers of lean vocals
crisscrossing one another like light beams. “And feel everything at once.”
That is precisely what Hippo Campus do best on Flood—feel everything and transmute it all into
songs that are inescapable. Take “Brand New,” three minutes of brilliantly coiled pop, its spring-
loaded rhythm lifting a guitar line built from pin pricks skyward. It’s about being ruined by the
letdown of a failed relationship and then finding a way forward, toward something so good you
haven’t even imagined it yet. It sounds that way, too. There’s the completely compulsive “Tooth
Fairy,” a quick-moving meditation on the confusion of interpersonal dynamics. Hippo Campus
smear bits of gentle psychedelia around a rhythm, riff, and hook that have the sleek lines of a
sports car; the result is a dynamic wonder, a song that feels emphatic at the start but reaches full
triumph by the end. Inspired by staring down cycles of addiction too long without taking steps to
break them, “Corduroy” finds the space between a bummer country blues and a sweetly
devotional waltz. Its vows of love, trust, and doubt are buoyed and also undercut by its slow rises
and falls, a musical portrait of trying to take that difficult next step.
The sentiments on Flood are raw, real, and unguarded, a testament to Hippo Campus dropping
preconceptions of how they had to sound after so many failed attempts to re-record these songs.
They wiped the slate clean, starting over without beliefs about what Hippo Campus or this record
needed to be. Still, sophistication lurks in subtle key and tempo changes, in the almost innate
shifts that a band of longtime best friends can tap after so much time spent helping to shape one
another’s musical language. Flood doesn’t need to tell you it’s important or interesting; it simply
is, just by virtue of how it’s written, built, and rendered, a map of what it’s like to feel everything
at once. This rebirth is accompanied by a crucial career shift for Hippo Campus, too, as they exit
the traditional label system to issue LP4 via Psychic Hotline, a truly independent imprint run by
peers and pals. If you’re working to let go of expectations, why not jettison them all? There’s a
bravery to that, and you can hear its revivifying spirit in every second of LP4.
Early into the endlessly propulsive “Paranoid,” where stunted acoustic strums undergird an
inescapable jangle, Luppen asks an existential question: “Is there something waiting out there for
us at the finish line?” For the next three minutes, the band cycles with him through his woes,
from the title’s overwhelming worry to notions of dislocation and loneliness. (Also, is there any
other refrain ever that manages to make the phrase “so god-damned fucking” sound so catchy
and natural?) But in the final verse, with his voice breaking through a scrim of distortion, he
stumbles upon a new credo: “Wait, I wanna give this life all that I have in me.” That is precisely
what Hippo Campus have done with Flood after realizing it doesn’t take a lifetime—or, well,
five years—to do just that.

Widely considered one of the biggest pop-stars around the world, Kylie Minogue songs have awarded her incredible career spanning more than two decades. Kylie Minogue's best-known songs include: 'Can’t Get You Out of My Head', 'All The Lovers', 'Spinning Around', 'I Should Be So Lucky' and many others. Kylie Minogue's setlist ranges from dance floor fillers, to powerhouse ballads, set against dramatic stage production and perfectly choregraphed routines. Kylie Minogue UK tours never fail to pull out all the stops as she travels around some of the largest and most spectacular arenas.

Kylie Minogue, currently on a high with her new track 'Dancing', will bring her extraordinary creativity as a live performer back to the stage this autumn when she plays a UK and Ireland tour. Kylie, who always raises the bar with her live performances, promises a brand-new extravaganza for this production which will be centred around her new album 'Golden', although of course her amazing back catalogue will be embraced.

Kylie Minogue OBE shot to fame after starring in Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours,’ since then she has managed an incredible career as both a singer-songwriter and actress. Widely known as both the Princess of Pop and the Goddess of Pop, recognised as the highest selling Australia artist of all time (ARIA.) As of 2015, Kylie has achieved worldwide record sales of more than 80 million worldwide, a figure which continues to grow.

Since then she has released eleven studio albums, two live CDs, eight live concert DVD's, plus her Greatest Hits and the Ultimate Kylie double album and multiple video packages. This is of course in addition to almost 50 singles released internationally, all of which have been hits.

Kylie's 11th studio album 'Aphrodite' generated huge levels of excitement even before release, and the first single, 'All the Lovers' has been hailed as 'one of the best Kylie songs ever' (News Of The World). Aphrodite sees Kylie collaborating with an impressive array of talent from the pop and dance worlds including: Calvin Harris, Jake Shears, Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish House Mafia) Nerina Pallot, Cutfather, Nervo & Tim Rice-Oxley. The maestro that is Stuart Price executive produced the album and Music Week declared that 'Aphrodite has seen Kylie Minogue return to her uplifting dance-pop best'!

Alan Jackson is one of the most successful and respected singer-songwriters in music. He is in the elite company of Paul McCartney and John Lennon among songwriters who’ve written more than 20 songs that they’ve recorded and taken to the top of the charts. Jackson is one of the 10 best-selling artists since the inception of SoundScan, ranking alongside the likes of Eminem and Metallica. His current single, “You Go Your Way,” is from his chart-topping album, Thirty Miles West, which was released June 5.

Jackson has sold nearly 60 million albums worldwide, topped the country singles charts 35 times, and scored more than 50 Top-10 hits. He has written or co-written 24 of his 35 #1 hit singles. Jackson is a 18-time ACM Award winner, a 16-time CMA Award recipient, and a two-time Grammy-winning artist whose songwriting has earned him the prestigious ASCAP Founders Award and an induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame as a 2011 Songwriter/Artist inductee.

Alan Jackson is one of the most successful and respected singer-songwriters in music. He is in the elite company of Paul McCartney and John Lennon among songwriters who’ve written more than 20 songs that they’ve recorded and taken to the top of the charts. Jackson is one of the 10 best-selling artists since the inception of SoundScan, ranking alongside the likes of Eminem and Metallica. His current single, “You Go Your Way,” is from his chart-topping album, Thirty Miles West, which was released June 5.

Jackson has sold nearly 60 million albums worldwide, topped the country singles charts 35 times, and scored more than 50 Top-10 hits. He has written or co-written 24 of his 35 #1 hit singles. Jackson is a 18-time ACM Award winner, a 16-time CMA Award recipient, and a two-time Grammy-winning artist whose songwriting has earned him the prestigious ASCAP Founders Award and an induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame as a 2011 Songwriter/Artist inductee.

Alan Jackson is one of the most successful and respected singer-songwriters in music. He is in the elite company of Paul McCartney and John Lennon among songwriters who’ve written more than 20 songs that they’ve recorded and taken to the top of the charts. Jackson is one of the 10 best-selling artists since the inception of SoundScan, ranking alongside the likes of Eminem and Metallica. His current single, “You Go Your Way,” is from his chart-topping album, Thirty Miles West, which was released June 5.

Jackson has sold nearly 60 million albums worldwide, topped the country singles charts 35 times, and scored more than 50 Top-10 hits. He has written or co-written 24 of his 35 #1 hit singles. Jackson is a 18-time ACM Award winner, a 16-time CMA Award recipient, and a two-time Grammy-winning artist whose songwriting has earned him the prestigious ASCAP Founders Award and an induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame as a 2011 Songwriter/Artist inductee.

A Country phenomenon with major star power and massive talent to match, Megan Moroney is the rare artist to earn icon status soon after breaking onto the scene. With over 1.5 BILLION total global streams to date, the Georgia-bred singer/songwriter kicked off the latest era of her formidable career with her critically acclaimed sophomore album Am I Okay?: a July 2024 release that debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200, emerged as the year’s third-biggest debut from a female Country artist, and won rave reviews from many of the music world’s leading publications (including Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Variety, Billboard, American Songwriter, and more). Featuring the Emo Cowgirl’s post-breakup ballad “No Caller ID” — a track that shattered the record for the biggest Country female song debut in streams in the U.S. — Am I Okay? continues the meteoric rise first set in motion with “Tennessee Orange,” a 2X PLATINUM #1 hit included on her 2023 blockbuster debut Lucky. Soon after Lucky’s arrival, Moroney began amassing a steady stream of accolades, including winning Breakthrough Female Video of the Year at the 2023 CMT Music Awards, MusicRow’s Breakout Artist of the Year at the 2024 CountryBreakout Awards, and New Female Artist of the Year at the 59th ACM Awards (where she reigned as the most nominated female artist with SIX NODS), in addition to racking up nominations from the CMA, iHeart, CMT Music, and Billboard Music Awards. With her live experience including selling out three consecutive headline tours, playing stadiums across the country as support for Kenny Chesney, and taking the stage at high-profile festivals like Stagecoach and Lollapalooza, Moroney will head overseas in September for the GEORGIA GIRL TOUR — a 15-date headlining run bringing her notoriously dazzling live show to audiences all over the UK and Europe.

Hippo Campus were sitting in the green room of a sold-out amphitheater show at the start of the Summer of 2023 when they realized they had a major problem. Their fourth LP simply wasn’t good enough. Singer Jake Luppen had been listening to the band’s work as they rolled around the country, trying to tease out how much work remained. All of it, he soon decided. The soul wasn’t there, obfuscated by the need to sound sophisticated and the overwhelming ambition to make the best Hippo Campus LP ever, adeeper and more profound record that reflected how their lives were changing.

They’d committed to that vow with longtime producer and collaborator Caleb Wright a little more than a year earlier, soon after a party where they celebrated the release of LP3. That very night, the call came that a longtime friend had unexpectedly died. They started this band as kids and enjoyed quick momentum, their thrill-a-minute live shows and charismatically experimental pop albums creating almost-instant, avid attention. But this was Hippo Campus’ first close brush with death; as adulthood encroached, the actual call of mortality reminded them of the stakes of art, friendship, and life.

So they committed to doing something major, even if it meant taking five years to do it. They took the task seriously, too: getting sober for an entirely improvisational session at North Carolina’s Drop of Sun months later, regularly attending therapy as a full band, writing more than 100 songs in only a year. That was all well and good, until Luppen and, really, all of Hippo Campus decided they didn’t actually like what they were making. Life and work had been dark in their orbit for a second—death and dejection, addiction and anxiety. This uneasy epiphany wasn’t helping.

So that night, in the dressing room, they called an audible. They were going to start over. Three months later, the four-member core of Hippo Campus rendezvoused with Wright and producer Brad Cook at Sonic Ranch, a playground-like studio complex on the Texas border. They gave themselves 10 days to cut the tracks they liked best, to make something to which they could commit at last. And Cook, in turn, gave them an edict of no second guessing or listening back, only forward momentum. Less than two weeks later, they emerged with what they’d given themselves half a decade to make—Flood, or the best album Hippo Campus has ever made.

You can immediately hear as much in a pair of wondrous songs toward the end, when the love-lost-and-found sing-along “Forget It” fades into the bittersweet and beautiful ache of “Closer,” a gem about trying and maybe failing to surrender your trust to someone else. This is a band that has learned to grow up by learning to let go. When Hippo Campus finally stopped trying to force the issue of making a masterpiece, they tapped intersecting veins of vulnerability and urgency, walking away with 13 tracks that reckon with their uncanny lives through at least that many totally absorbing hooks.

During the last several years, Hippo Campus has had to navigate the tougher wages of success. They are, of course, grateful that a pop band they named on the lark of some psychology lesson blew up, but it certainly eliminated the segue from adolescence to adulthood that most of us enjoy in relative privacy. How could they survive inside and alongside this thing they had created and had outgrown them? And what’s more, how could they endure the vagaries of the music industry, so that they didn’t let a disappointing tour or disspiriting release demoralize them? Or, to ask the cumulative question, how do four people connected so intimately for so long grow as individuals while preserving the bond that makes what they do so special? Or is that actually too much to ask?

For a minute there, the answer seemed possibly like yes. But soon after that improvisational session, the band returned to its own Minneapolis studio and dug in. They stumbled upon “Everything at Once,” with Nathan Stocker’s tricky little guitar lope becoming the basis for the slowly rising rhythm of drummer Whistler Allen and bassist Zach Sutton. Stepping outside for some space, Luppen quickly penned a thesis of self-criticism and self-forgiveness. Being less than the expectations of an industry, a family, or a faith are totally normal, he suggests in an anthem of empowerment that is almost casual. He gives himself the grace of being human: “You gotta lay down sometimes, be patient sometimes,” Luppen sings, layers of lean vocals crisscrossing one another like light beams. “And feel everything at once.”

That is precisely what Hippo Campus do best on Flood—feel everything and transmute it all into songs that are inescapable. Take “Brand New,” three minutes of brilliantly coiled pop, its spring-loaded rhythm lifting a guitar line built from pin pricks skyward. It’s about being ruined by the letdown of a failed relationship and then finding a way forward, toward something so good you haven’t even imagined it yet. It sounds that way, too. There’s the completely compulsive “Tooth Fairy,” a quick-moving meditation on the confusion of interpersonal dynamics. Hippo Campus smear bits of gentle psychedelia around a rhythm, riff, and hook that have the sleek lines of a sports car; the result is a dynamic wonder, a song that feels emphatic at the start but reaches full triumph by the end. Inspired by staring down cycles of addiction too long without taking steps to break them, “Corduroy” finds the space between a bummer country blues and a sweetly devotional waltz. Its vows of love, trust, and doubt are buoyed and also undercut by its slow rises and falls, a musical portrait of trying to take that difficult next step.

The sentiments on Flood are raw, real, and unguarded, a testament to Hippo Campus dropping preconceptions of how they had to sound after so many failed attempts to re-record these songs. They wiped the slate clean, starting over without beliefs about what Hippo Campus or this record needed to be. Still, sophistication lurks in subtle key and tempo changes, in the almost innate shifts that a band of longtime best friends can tap after so much time spent helping to shape one another’s musical language. Flood doesn’t need to tell you it’s important or interesting; it simply is, just by virtue of how it’s written, built, and rendered, a map of what it’s like to feel everything at once. This rebirth is accompanied by a crucial career shift for Hippo Campus, too, as they exit the traditional label system to issue LP4 via Psychic Hotline, a truly independent imprint run by peers and pals. If you’re working to let go of expectations, why not jettison them all? There’s a bravery to that, and you can hear its revivifying spirit in every second of LP4.

Early into the endlessly propulsive “Paranoid,” where stunted acoustic strums undergird an inescapable jangle, Luppen asks an existential question: “Is there something waiting out there for us at the finish line?” For the next three minutes, the band cycles with him through his woes, from the title’s overwhelming worry to notions of dislocation and loneliness. (Also, is there any other refrain ever that manages to make the phrase “so god-damned fucking” sound so catchy and natural?) But in the final verse, with his voice breaking through a scrim of distortion, he stumbles upon a new credo: “Wait, I wanna give this life all that I have in me.” That is precisely what Hippo Campus have done with Flood after realizing it doesn’t take a lifetime—or, well, five years—to do just that.

Widely considered one of the biggest pop-stars around the world, Kylie Minogue songs have awarded her incredible career spanning more than two decades. Kylie Minogue's best-known songs include: 'Can’t Get You Out of My Head', 'All The Lovers', 'Spinning Around', 'I Should Be So Lucky' and many others. Kylie Minogue's setlist ranges from dance floor fillers, to powerhouse ballads, set against dramatic stage production and perfectly choregraphed routines. Kylie Minogue UK tours never fail to pull out all the stops as she travels around some of the largest and most spectacular arenas.

Kylie Minogue, currently on a high with her new track 'Dancing', will bring her extraordinary creativity as a live performer back to the stage this autumn when she plays a UK and Ireland tour. Kylie, who always raises the bar with her live performances, promises a brand-new extravaganza for this production which will be centred around her new album 'Golden', although of course her amazing back catalogue will be embraced.

Kylie Minogue OBE shot to fame after starring in Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours,’ since then she has managed an incredible career as both a singer-songwriter and actress. Widely known as both the Princess of Pop and the Goddess of Pop, recognised as the highest selling Australia artist of all time (ARIA.) As of 2015, Kylie has achieved worldwide record sales of more than 80 million worldwide, a figure which continues to grow.

Since then she has released eleven studio albums, two live CDs, eight live concert DVD's, plus her Greatest Hits and the Ultimate Kylie double album and multiple video packages. This is of course in addition to almost 50 singles released internationally, all of which have been hits.

Kylie's 11th studio album 'Aphrodite' generated huge levels of excitement even before release, and the first single, 'All the Lovers' has been hailed as 'one of the best Kylie songs ever' (News Of The World). Aphrodite sees Kylie collaborating with an impressive array of talent from the pop and dance worlds including: Calvin Harris, Jake Shears, Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish House Mafia) Nerina Pallot, Cutfather, Nervo & Tim Rice-Oxley. The maestro that is Stuart Price executive produced the album and Music Week declared that 'Aphrodite has seen Kylie Minogue return to her uplifting dance-pop best'!

2024 has already seen Kylie take home the Global Icon Award at the BRITs, win the Best Pop Dance Recording Grammy for the smash hit, ‘Padam Padam’, attend the Met Gala, complete her inaugural Las Vegas Residency, perform at WeHo Pride and release a series of high profile collaborations. July saw Kylie perform an awe-inspiring and critically lauded headline show at London’s BST Hyde Park. Described by The Guardian as “a glorious celebration of pop perfection” (5*) and by Metro as “outrageously good” (5*), Rolling Stone’s 5* review said: “This pop queen’s London takeover proves her unchallengeable place atop the throne remains perfectly intact.” Kylie released her Number 1 album 'Tension' in September 2023 which has now surpassed 500,000 sales worldwide and nearing half a billion streams.

The Wrecks ignite an instant connection with their unique, infectious D.I.Y. approach to alternative pop rock. Their irresistible hooks and electrifying performances do more than captivate—they fully immerse fans, pulling them into every moment.

The Los Angeles-based band— Nick Anderson [vocals, guitar, keyboard, production], Nicholas “Schmizz” Schmidt [lead guitar], Aaron Kelley [bass], and William “Billy” Nally [drums]—helm every facet of their vision, writing, producing, and cooking up a homegrown signature sound without comparison. As such, the quartet deliver an insanely immersive experience for their diehard audience at shows, within songs, and even on social media. Due to this response, they have sold tens of thousands of tickets and independently stacked up nearly 300 million total streams across songs like “Favorite Liar,” “Fvck Somebody,” and “Freaking Out” as well as two full-length offerings Infinitely Ordinary [2020] and Sonder [2022]. Ones To Watch went as far as to proclaim, “The Wrecks should be your new favorite alternative rock band.”

In 2024, the band signed with Lava/Republic Records opening an exciting new chapter. They’ve kicked things off with the irresistibly catchy yet delightfully offbeat lead single, “Always, Everytime,” with much more music and touring on the horizon. Once The Wrecks get in your head, they won’t leave—and you’ll love every second of it.

Widely considered one of the biggest pop-stars around the world, Kylie Minogue songs have awarded her incredible career spanning more than two decades. Kylie Minogue's best-known songs include: 'Can’t Get You Out of My Head', 'All The Lovers', 'Spinning Around', 'I Should Be So Lucky' and many others. Kylie Minogue's setlist ranges from dance floor fillers, to powerhouse ballads, set against dramatic stage production and perfectly choregraphed routines. Kylie Minogue UK tours never fail to pull out all the stops as she travels around some of the largest and most spectacular arenas.

Kylie Minogue, currently on a high with her new track 'Dancing', will bring her extraordinary creativity as a live performer back to the stage this autumn when she plays a UK and Ireland tour. Kylie, who always raises the bar with her live performances, promises a brand-new extravaganza for this production which will be centred around her new album 'Golden', although of course her amazing back catalogue will be embraced.

Kylie Minogue OBE shot to fame after starring in Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours,’ since then she has managed an incredible career as both a singer-songwriter and actress. Widely known as both the Princess of Pop and the Goddess of Pop, recognised as the highest selling Australia artist of all time (ARIA.) As of 2015, Kylie has achieved worldwide record sales of more than 80 million worldwide, a figure which continues to grow.

Since then she has released eleven studio albums, two live CDs, eight live concert DVD's, plus her Greatest Hits and the Ultimate Kylie double album and multiple video packages. This is of course in addition to almost 50 singles released internationally, all of which have been hits.

Kylie's 11th studio album 'Aphrodite' generated huge levels of excitement even before release, and the first single, 'All the Lovers' has been hailed as 'one of the best Kylie songs ever' (News Of The World). Aphrodite sees Kylie collaborating with an impressive array of talent from the pop and dance worlds including: Calvin Harris, Jake Shears, Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish House Mafia) Nerina Pallot, Cutfather, Nervo & Tim Rice-Oxley. The maestro that is Stuart Price executive produced the album and Music Week declared that 'Aphrodite has seen Kylie Minogue return to her uplifting dance-pop best'!

Widely considered one of the biggest pop-stars around the world, Kylie Minogue songs have awarded her incredible career spanning more than two decades. Kylie Minogue's best-known songs include: 'Can’t Get You Out of My Head', 'All The Lovers', 'Spinning Around', 'I Should Be So Lucky' and many others. Kylie Minogue's setlist ranges from dance floor fillers, to powerhouse ballads, set against dramatic stage production and perfectly choregraphed routines. Kylie Minogue UK tours never fail to pull out all the stops as she travels around some of the largest and most spectacular arenas.

Kylie Minogue, currently on a high with her new track 'Dancing', will bring her extraordinary creativity as a live performer back to the stage this autumn when she plays a UK and Ireland tour. Kylie, who always raises the bar with her live performances, promises a brand-new extravaganza for this production which will be centred around her new album 'Golden', although of course her amazing back catalogue will be embraced.

Kylie Minogue OBE shot to fame after starring in Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours,’ since then she has managed an incredible career as both a singer-songwriter and actress. Widely known as both the Princess of Pop and the Goddess of Pop, recognised as the highest selling Australia artist of all time (ARIA.) As of 2015, Kylie has achieved worldwide record sales of more than 80 million worldwide, a figure which continues to grow.

Since then she has released eleven studio albums, two live CDs, eight live concert DVD's, plus her Greatest Hits and the Ultimate Kylie double album and multiple video packages. This is of course in addition to almost 50 singles released internationally, all of which have been hits.

Kylie's 11th studio album 'Aphrodite' generated huge levels of excitement even before release, and the first single, 'All the Lovers' has been hailed as 'one of the best Kylie songs ever' (News Of The World). Aphrodite sees Kylie collaborating with an impressive array of talent from the pop and dance worlds including: Calvin Harris, Jake Shears, Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish House Mafia) Nerina Pallot, Cutfather, Nervo & Tim Rice-Oxley. The maestro that is Stuart Price executive produced the album and Music Week declared that 'Aphrodite has seen Kylie Minogue return to her uplifting dance-pop best'!

Generating millions of plays weekly on her videos, Alexandra Kay commands the attention of country music fans. With a voice reminiscent of Dolly Parton, Alison Kraus and Leanne Womack, AK is bringing country music back to its roots. Growing up about 40 minutes from St. Louis Missouri in Waterloo, Illinois Alexandra began writing songs at the age of 15 as a way to cope with being a teenager, her first loves and finding herself. Alexandra started working in the entertainment business at a young age by booking commercials and voice-over work. While performing in multiple musical theater productions, Alexandra decided to try her luck as a contestant on American Idol in 2011.

Alexandra Kay started working in hip hop and R&B in early 2012. Using the platform Nelly created, AK sewed herself into the St. Louis music scene. Working with notable STL artists such as Nelly and Huey Alexandra created enough buzz to sign an independent record deal with Nettwork Entertainment in 2013. AK’s first single “No More” was a radio hit spending three weeks at #1 on the New Music Weekly Top 40 pop chart, also scoring at the top of Hot AC and Hot 100 charts.

Starting her country music career independently at 22, Alexandra began recording cover videos of many 90’s country music favorites and posting them on her Facebook fan page, going viral dozens of times. Since taking social media by storm Alexandra Kay has collaborated with some of the most iconic names in the music industry like Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Scott Stapp of Creed.

Alexandra Kay joined Tim McGraw, Russell Dickerson, and Brandon Davis on the McGraw Tour 2022 amphitheater tour. The tour began Friday, April 29, 2022 in Rogers, AR and ended in Mansfield, MA on June 4, 2022. Alexandra also shared the stage with with country greats Tracy Lawrence and Clay Walker in 2022. In 2023 Alexandra Kay performed at C2C 2023 in London, England for the first time as well as headlined her own sold out out show in Manchester.

Alexandra has proved that artists can captivate audiences around the world and turn the social media recognition into an adoring fan base.

Generating millions of plays weekly on her videos, Alexandra Kay commands the attention of country music fans. With a voice reminiscent of Dolly Parton, Alison Kraus and Leanne Womack, AK is bringing country music back to its roots. Growing up about 40 minutes from St. Louis Missouri in Waterloo, Illinois Alexandra began writing songs at the age of 15 as a way to cope with being a teenager, her first loves and finding herself. Alexandra started working in the entertainment business at a young age by booking commercials and voice-over work. While performing in multiple musical theater productions, Alexandra decided to try her luck as a contestant on American Idol in 2011.

Alexandra Kay started working in hip hop and R&B in early 2012. Using the platform Nelly created, AK sewed herself into the St. Louis music scene. Working with notable STL artists such as Nelly and Huey Alexandra created enough buzz to sign an independent record deal with Nettwork Entertainment in 2013. AK’s first single “No More” was a radio hit spending three weeks at #1 on the New Music Weekly Top 40 pop chart, also scoring at the top of Hot AC and Hot 100 charts.

Starting her country music career independently at 22, Alexandra began recording cover videos of many 90’s country music favorites and posting them on her Facebook fan page, going viral dozens of times. Since taking social media by storm Alexandra Kay has collaborated with some of the most iconic names in the music industry like Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Scott Stapp of Creed.

Alexandra Kay joined Tim McGraw, Russell Dickerson, and Brandon Davis on the McGraw Tour 2022 amphitheater tour. The tour began Friday, April 29, 2022 in Rogers, AR and ended in Mansfield, MA on June 4, 2022. Alexandra also shared the stage with with country greats Tracy Lawrence and Clay Walker in 2022. In 2023 Alexandra Kay performed at C2C 2023 in London, England for the first time as well as headlined her own sold out out show in Manchester.

Alexandra has proved that artists can captivate audiences around the world and turn the social media recognition into an adoring fan base.

Generating millions of plays weekly on her videos, Alexandra Kay commands the attention of country music fans. With a voice reminiscent of Dolly Parton, Alison Kraus and Leanne Womack, AK is bringing country music back to its roots. Growing up about 40 minutes from St. Louis Missouri in Waterloo, Illinois Alexandra began writing songs at the age of 15 as a way to cope with being a teenager, her first loves and finding herself. Alexandra started working in the entertainment business at a young age by booking commercials and voice-over work. While performing in multiple musical theater productions, Alexandra decided to try her luck as a contestant on American Idol in 2011.

Alexandra Kay started working in hip hop and R&B in early 2012. Using the platform Nelly created, AK sewed herself into the St. Louis music scene. Working with notable STL artists such as Nelly and Huey Alexandra created enough buzz to sign an independent record deal with Nettwork Entertainment in 2013. AK’s first single “No More” was a radio hit spending three weeks at #1 on the New Music Weekly Top 40 pop chart, also scoring at the top of Hot AC and Hot 100 charts.

Starting her country music career independently at 22, Alexandra began recording cover videos of many 90’s country music favorites and posting them on her Facebook fan page, going viral dozens of times. Since taking social media by storm Alexandra Kay has collaborated with some of the most iconic names in the music industry like Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Scott Stapp of Creed.

Alexandra Kay joined Tim McGraw, Russell Dickerson, and Brandon Davis on the McGraw Tour 2022 amphitheater tour. The tour began Friday, April 29, 2022 in Rogers, AR and ended in Mansfield, MA on June 4, 2022. Alexandra also shared the stage with with country greats Tracy Lawrence and Clay Walker in 2022. In 2023 Alexandra Kay performed at C2C 2023 in London, England for the first time as well as headlined her own sold out out show in Manchester.

Alexandra has proved that artists can captivate audiences around the world and turn the social media recognition into an adoring fan base.

Widely considered one of the biggest pop-stars around the world, Kylie Minogue songs have awarded her incredible career spanning more than two decades. Kylie Minogue's best-known songs include: 'Can’t Get You Out of My Head', 'All The Lovers', 'Spinning Around', 'I Should Be So Lucky' and many others. Kylie Minogue's setlist ranges from dance floor fillers, to powerhouse ballads, set against dramatic stage production and perfectly choregraphed routines. Kylie Minogue UK tours never fail to pull out all the stops as she travels around some of the largest and most spectacular arenas.

Kylie Minogue, currently on a high with her new track 'Dancing', will bring her extraordinary creativity as a live performer back to the stage this autumn when she plays a UK and Ireland tour. Kylie, who always raises the bar with her live performances, promises a brand-new extravaganza for this production which will be centred around her new album 'Golden', although of course her amazing back catalogue will be embraced.

Kylie Minogue OBE shot to fame after starring in Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours,’ since then she has managed an incredible career as both a singer-songwriter and actress. Widely known as both the Princess of Pop and the Goddess of Pop, recognised as the highest selling Australia artist of all time (ARIA.) As of 2015, Kylie has achieved worldwide record sales of more than 80 million worldwide, a figure which continues to grow.

Since then she has released eleven studio albums, two live CDs, eight live concert DVD's, plus her Greatest Hits and the Ultimate Kylie double album and multiple video packages. This is of course in addition to almost 50 singles released internationally, all of which have been hits.

Kylie's 11th studio album 'Aphrodite' generated huge levels of excitement even before release, and the first single, 'All the Lovers' has been hailed as 'one of the best Kylie songs ever' (News Of The World). Aphrodite sees Kylie collaborating with an impressive array of talent from the pop and dance worlds including: Calvin Harris, Jake Shears, Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish House Mafia) Nerina Pallot, Cutfather, Nervo & Tim Rice-Oxley. The maestro that is Stuart Price executive produced the album and Music Week declared that 'Aphrodite has seen Kylie Minogue return to her uplifting dance-pop best'!

Generating millions of plays weekly on her videos, Alexandra Kay commands the attention of country music fans. With a voice reminiscent of Dolly Parton, Alison Kraus and Leanne Womack, AK is bringing country music back to its roots. Growing up about 40 minutes from St. Louis Missouri in Waterloo, Illinois Alexandra began writing songs at the age of 15 as a way to cope with being a teenager, her first loves and finding herself. Alexandra started working in the entertainment business at a young age by booking commercials and voice-over work. While performing in multiple musical theater productions, Alexandra decided to try her luck as a contestant on American Idol in 2011.

Alexandra Kay started working in hip hop and R&B in early 2012. Using the platform Nelly created, AK sewed herself into the St. Louis music scene. Working with notable STL artists such as Nelly and Huey Alexandra created enough buzz to sign an independent record deal with Nettwork Entertainment in 2013. AK’s first single “No More” was a radio hit spending three weeks at #1 on the New Music Weekly Top 40 pop chart, also scoring at the top of Hot AC and Hot 100 charts.

Starting her country music career independently at 22, Alexandra began recording cover videos of many 90’s country music favorites and posting them on her Facebook fan page, going viral dozens of times. Since taking social media by storm Alexandra Kay has collaborated with some of the most iconic names in the music industry like Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Scott Stapp of Creed.

Alexandra Kay joined Tim McGraw, Russell Dickerson, and Brandon Davis on the McGraw Tour 2022 amphitheater tour. The tour began Friday, April 29, 2022 in Rogers, AR and ended in Mansfield, MA on June 4, 2022. Alexandra also shared the stage with with country greats Tracy Lawrence and Clay Walker in 2022. In 2023 Alexandra Kay performed at C2C 2023 in London, England for the first time as well as headlined her own sold out out show in Manchester.

Alexandra has proved that artists can captivate audiences around the world and turn the social media recognition into an adoring fan base.

Generating millions of plays weekly on her videos, Alexandra Kay commands the attention of country music fans. With a voice reminiscent of Dolly Parton, Alison Kraus and Leanne Womack, AK is bringing country music back to its roots. Growing up about 40 minutes from St. Louis Missouri in Waterloo, Illinois Alexandra began writing songs at the age of 15 as a way to cope with being a teenager, her first loves and finding herself. Alexandra started working in the entertainment business at a young age by booking commercials and voice-over work. While performing in multiple musical theater productions, Alexandra decided to try her luck as a contestant on American Idol in 2011.

Alexandra Kay started working in hip hop and R&B in early 2012. Using the platform Nelly created, AK sewed herself into the St. Louis music scene. Working with notable STL artists such as Nelly and Huey Alexandra created enough buzz to sign an independent record deal with Nettwork Entertainment in 2013. AK’s first single “No More” was a radio hit spending three weeks at #1 on the New Music Weekly Top 40 pop chart, also scoring at the top of Hot AC and Hot 100 charts.

Starting her country music career independently at 22, Alexandra began recording cover videos of many 90’s country music favorites and posting them on her Facebook fan page, going viral dozens of times. Since taking social media by storm Alexandra Kay has collaborated with some of the most iconic names in the music industry like Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Scott Stapp of Creed.

Alexandra Kay joined Tim McGraw, Russell Dickerson, and Brandon Davis on the McGraw Tour 2022 amphitheater tour. The tour began Friday, April 29, 2022 in Rogers, AR and ended in Mansfield, MA on June 4, 2022. Alexandra also shared the stage with with country greats Tracy Lawrence and Clay Walker in 2022. In 2023 Alexandra Kay performed at C2C 2023 in London, England for the first time as well as headlined her own sold out out show in Manchester.

Alexandra has proved that artists can captivate audiences around the world and turn the social media recognition into an adoring fan base.

Generating millions of plays weekly on her videos, Alexandra Kay commands the attention of country music fans. With a voice reminiscent of Dolly Parton, Alison Kraus and Leanne Womack, AK is bringing country music back to its roots. Growing up about 40 minutes from St. Louis Missouri in Waterloo, Illinois Alexandra began writing songs at the age of 15 as a way to cope with being a teenager, her first loves and finding herself. Alexandra started working in the entertainment business at a young age by booking commercials and voice-over work. While performing in multiple musical theater productions, Alexandra decided to try her luck as a contestant on American Idol in 2011.

Alexandra Kay started working in hip hop and R&B in early 2012. Using the platform Nelly created, AK sewed herself into the St. Louis music scene. Working with notable STL artists such as Nelly and Huey Alexandra created enough buzz to sign an independent record deal with Nettwork Entertainment in 2013. AK’s first single “No More” was a radio hit spending three weeks at #1 on the New Music Weekly Top 40 pop chart, also scoring at the top of Hot AC and Hot 100 charts.

Starting her country music career independently at 22, Alexandra began recording cover videos of many 90’s country music favorites and posting them on her Facebook fan page, going viral dozens of times. Since taking social media by storm Alexandra Kay has collaborated with some of the most iconic names in the music industry like Randy Travis, Tim McGraw, and Scott Stapp of Creed.

Alexandra Kay joined Tim McGraw, Russell Dickerson, and Brandon Davis on the McGraw Tour 2022 amphitheater tour. The tour began Friday, April 29, 2022 in Rogers, AR and ended in Mansfield, MA on June 4, 2022. Alexandra also shared the stage with with country greats Tracy Lawrence and Clay Walker in 2022. In 2023 Alexandra Kay performed at C2C 2023 in London, England for the first time as well as headlined her own sold out out show in Manchester.

Alexandra has proved that artists can captivate audiences around the world and turn the social media recognition into an adoring fan base.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Widely considered one of the biggest pop-stars around the world, Kylie Minogue songs have awarded her incredible career spanning more than two decades. Kylie Minogue's best-known songs include: 'Can’t Get You Out of My Head', 'All The Lovers', 'Spinning Around', 'I Should Be So Lucky' and many others. Kylie Minogue's setlist ranges from dance floor fillers, to powerhouse ballads, set against dramatic stage production and perfectly choregraphed routines. Kylie Minogue UK tours never fail to pull out all the stops as she travels around some of the largest and most spectacular arenas.

Kylie Minogue, currently on a high with her new track 'Dancing', will bring her extraordinary creativity as a live performer back to the stage this autumn when she plays a UK and Ireland tour. Kylie, who always raises the bar with her live performances, promises a brand-new extravaganza for this production which will be centred around her new album 'Golden', although of course her amazing back catalogue will be embraced.

Kylie Minogue OBE shot to fame after starring in Australian soap opera ‘Neighbours,’ since then she has managed an incredible career as both a singer-songwriter and actress. Widely known as both the Princess of Pop and the Goddess of Pop, recognised as the highest selling Australia artist of all time (ARIA.) As of 2015, Kylie has achieved worldwide record sales of more than 80 million worldwide, a figure which continues to grow.

Since then she has released eleven studio albums, two live CDs, eight live concert DVD's, plus her Greatest Hits and the Ultimate Kylie double album and multiple video packages. This is of course in addition to almost 50 singles released internationally, all of which have been hits.

Kylie's 11th studio album 'Aphrodite' generated huge levels of excitement even before release, and the first single, 'All the Lovers' has been hailed as 'one of the best Kylie songs ever' (News Of The World). Aphrodite sees Kylie collaborating with an impressive array of talent from the pop and dance worlds including: Calvin Harris, Jake Shears, Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish House Mafia) Nerina Pallot, Cutfather, Nervo & Tim Rice-Oxley. The maestro that is Stuart Price executive produced the album and Music Week declared that 'Aphrodite has seen Kylie Minogue return to her uplifting dance-pop best'!

Over the past four decades — give or take a decade break — the illustrious and critically acclaimed Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) have sold over 40 million records worldwide, establishing them as electronic synthesiser pioneers and one of Britain’s best-loved pop groups. Their 13 long players include benchmark-raising classics Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (1980), Organisation (1980), Architecture & Morality (1981), and Dazzle Ships (1983). OMD conquered the United States, and yielded the 1986 hit, "If You Leave" from the Pretty In Pink Soundtrack. They have also achieved 12 top 20 hits on the UK Singles Chart, as well as three top 20 hits on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Following the recent celebration of their 40th anniversary, OMD returned last year with their first new studio album since 2017's highly praised The Punishment Of Luxury, a record entitled Bauhaus Staircase (released via White Noise through The Orchard). The record is regarded as OMD's most explicitly political record and the crowning achievement of their desire to be both Stockhausen and Abba - born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when, as Andy McCluskey admits: "I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom."

Predominantly written, recorded, and mixed by both McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (who has recently become a second-time father), Bauhaus Staircase’s other main external influence was David Watts, mainly known as a rock producer who helmed Sheffield band The Reytons’ recent No 1 album and mixed two tracks on the new OMD record. With Bauhaus Staircase, OMD have created a landmark album worthy of their finest work, showing a duo who are still perfectly in sync 45 years after their first gig at legendary Liverpool club Eric’s. "I’m very happy with what we’ve done on this record," McCluskey summarizes. "I’m comfortable if this is OMD’s last statement."

In celebration of their new LP, OMD have also returned to the stage, headlining North America in the Fall of 2024.

"We are so excited to be able to tour again with a brand new album to showcase,” says Andy McCluskey. “It's been six years since we learned new songs for live performances. The songs from Bauhaus Staircase will fit beautifully into our setlist - we just have to choose which five to play, as we have to treat people to the hits as well!"

Over the past four decades — give or take a decade break — the illustrious and critically acclaimed Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) have sold over 40 million records worldwide, establishing them as electronic synthesiser pioneers and one of Britain’s best-loved pop groups. Their 13 long players include benchmark-raising classics Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (1980), Organisation (1980), Architecture & Morality (1981), and Dazzle Ships (1983). OMD conquered the United States, and yielded the 1986 hit, "If You Leave" from the Pretty In Pink Soundtrack. They have also achieved 12 top 20 hits on the UK Singles Chart, as well as three top 20 hits on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Following the recent celebration of their 40th anniversary, OMD returned last year with their first new studio album since 2017's highly praised The Punishment Of Luxury, a record entitled Bauhaus Staircase (released via White Noise through The Orchard). The record is regarded as OMD's most explicitly political record and the crowning achievement of their desire to be both Stockhausen and Abba - born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when, as Andy McCluskey admits: "I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom."

Predominantly written, recorded, and mixed by both McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (who has recently become a second-time father), Bauhaus Staircase’s other main external influence was David Watts, mainly known as a rock producer who helmed Sheffield band The Reytons’ recent No 1 album and mixed two tracks on the new OMD record. With Bauhaus Staircase, OMD have created a landmark album worthy of their finest work, showing a duo who are still perfectly in sync 45 years after their first gig at legendary Liverpool club Eric’s. "I’m very happy with what we’ve done on this record," McCluskey summarizes. "I’m comfortable if this is OMD’s last statement."

In celebration of their new LP, OMD have also returned to the stage, headlining North America in the Fall of 2024.

"We are so excited to be able to tour again with a brand new album to showcase,” says Andy McCluskey. “It's been six years since we learned new songs for live performances. The songs from Bauhaus Staircase will fit beautifully into our setlist - we just have to choose which five to play, as we have to treat people to the hits as well!"

IMAGINE DRAGONS ÅKER UT PÅ OMFATTANDE EUROPATURNÉ – ÅTERVÄNDER TILL SVERIGE 2025

Äntligen kan Grammy-belönade och multiplatinasäljande Imagine Dragons meddela att de tar
med LOOM World Tour till Europa nästa år! Stadionturnén följer upp bandets kritikerrosade
album LOOM som släpptes i somras och kommer att besöka 16 länder runtom Europa. Den 5
juni återvänder Imagine Dragons till Sverige för en efterlängtad konsert på Tele2 Arena i
Stockholm!

Nästa år tar Imagine Dragons med sin tokhyllade turné LOOM World Tour till Europa.
Stadionturnén kommer att besöka 16 länder, bland annat Estland, Tjeckien, Italien, Spanien,
Frankrike, Nederländerna och den 5 juni har turen kommer till Sverige.

Tidigare i somras släppte Imagine Dragons sitt efterlängtade sjätte album LOOM. Albumet
representerar höjdpunkten i deras konstnärliga resa och anses vara deras bästa verk hittills.
LOOM, som är helt producerat av Imagine Dragons tillsammans med de svenska hitmakarna
och långvariga samarbetspartnerna Mattman och Robin, hittar den perfekta balansen mellan de
klassiska sounds som gjort dem till superstjärnor en nytänkande kreativitet.

“Imagine Dragons are flying higher than ever ….Ten years after their commercial breakthrough,
the Las Vegas rockers are still scoring real crossover hits, playing to packed houses, and playing
a U2-esque long game” - Billboard

“Imagine Dragons still know how to efficiently stomp stadiums into rubble…The alt-rock band
remains reliably, radioactively enormous” - Rolling Stone
“Imagine Dragons is one of the few remaining mega acts filling arenas with a real-life electric
guitar loud and visible onstage.” - The Washington Post
EUROPATURNÉ

Om Imagine Dragons
Imagine Dragons fortsätter att omdefiniera rockmusiken i det nuvarande århundradet. De säljer
ut arenor, skapar mäktiga anthems och slår rekord gång på gång.

Det diamantcertifierade och
GRAMMY-belönade Las Vegas-baserade bandet är ett av de största rockbanden i världen. Med
en försäljning på över 74 miljoner album och över 160 miljarder streams, sticker de ut som “the
only band in history to earn four RIAA Diamond singles”: Radioactive (16x-platinacertifierad),
Believer (13x-platina), Thunder (12x-platina) och Demons (11x-platina).

Sedan deras debut 2009 har de haft fem raka top 10 album på Billboard Top 200 med Night
Visions (2012), Smoke + Mirrors (2015), Evolve (2017), Origins (2018) och Mercury – Act 1
(2021).

Med releasen Mercury – Act 2 (2022) avslutade de sitt första dubbelalbum, producerat
av legendariska Rick Rubin. Hitlåten Bones från Mercury – Act 2 nådde första plats på
Alternative Radio och finns kvar på Spotifys Global Top 50.

Imagine Dragons dominerar radio och är ett av endast fyra band som har haft flera topp 5
singlar i rad på Alternative Radio.

De skrev även historia på Spotify när Bad Liar blev deras
tionde låt att passera en miljard streams. Bandet är nu det med flest låtar som nått över en
miljard streams på plattformen.

Dessutom har deras musikvideor till Thunder och Believer över
2 miljarder visningar på YouTuber, medan Radioactive och Demons överstigit en miljard
visningar.

Bandet har samarbetat med artister som Kendrick Lamar, Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Avicii och
filmkompositören Hans Zimmer. De har även samlat in miljontals dollar för olika ändamål,
inklusive deras barncancerstiftelse Tyler Robinson Foundation och frontmannen Dan Reynolds’
LOVELOUD Foundation, som stödjer HBTQ+-ungdomar. 2022 blev de utsedda till ambassadörer
för UNITED 24 av Ukrainas president Volodymyr Zelensky, för att stödja humanitärt arbete i
Ukraina.

Over the past four decades — give or take a decade break — the illustrious and critically acclaimed Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) have sold over 40 million records worldwide, establishing them as electronic synthesiser pioneers and one of Britain’s best-loved pop groups. Their 13 long players include benchmark-raising classics Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (1980), Organisation (1980), Architecture & Morality (1981), and Dazzle Ships (1983). OMD conquered the United States, and yielded the 1986 hit, "If You Leave" from the Pretty In Pink Soundtrack. They have also achieved 12 top 20 hits on the UK Singles Chart, as well as three top 20 hits on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Following the recent celebration of their 40th anniversary, OMD returned last year with their first new studio album since 2017's highly praised The Punishment Of Luxury, a record entitled Bauhaus Staircase (released via White Noise through The Orchard). The record is regarded as OMD's most explicitly political record and the crowning achievement of their desire to be both Stockhausen and Abba - born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when, as Andy McCluskey admits: "I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom."

Predominantly written, recorded, and mixed by both McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (who has recently become a second-time father), Bauhaus Staircase’s other main external influence was David Watts, mainly known as a rock producer who helmed Sheffield band The Reytons’ recent No 1 album and mixed two tracks on the new OMD record. With Bauhaus Staircase, OMD have created a landmark album worthy of their finest work, showing a duo who are still perfectly in sync 45 years after their first gig at legendary Liverpool club Eric’s. "I’m very happy with what we’ve done on this record," McCluskey summarizes. "I’m comfortable if this is OMD’s last statement."

In celebration of their new LP, OMD have also returned to the stage, headlining North America in the Fall of 2024.

"We are so excited to be able to tour again with a brand new album to showcase,” says Andy McCluskey. “It's been six years since we learned new songs for live performances. The songs from Bauhaus Staircase will fit beautifully into our setlist - we just have to choose which five to play, as we have to treat people to the hits as well!"

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

PLATINUM-selling Thomas Rhett leads the pack as one of country music’s elite new artists with the fastest rising single of his career, the Top 5 GOLD certified upbeat breakup anthem “Crash And Burn” from his upcoming sophomore release TANGLED UP out Sept. 25 (The Valory Music Co.). As "one of country music's most successful – and divisive – new artists" (The Guardian), the new music follows his debut album IT GOES LIKE THIS, which spawned three consecutive No. one hits, making him Billboard’s first male country artist to do so from a debut album in over two decades. The CMA and ACM “New Artist of the Year” nominee initially garnered attention as a gifted songwriter with credits including hits by Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean and Lee Brice. It is his “high-energy all the way” (El Paso Times) live show that has “the audience dancing all the way up in the rafters of the stadium” (Billboard) that continues to catch the attention of critics out on the road. For tour dates and more visit, thomasrhett.com.

PLATINUM-selling Thomas Rhett leads the pack as one of country music’s elite new artists with the fastest rising single of his career, the Top 5 GOLD certified upbeat breakup anthem “Crash And Burn” from his upcoming sophomore release TANGLED UP out Sept. 25 (The Valory Music Co.). As "one of country music's most successful – and divisive – new artists" (The Guardian), the new music follows his debut album IT GOES LIKE THIS, which spawned three consecutive No. one hits, making him Billboard’s first male country artist to do so from a debut album in over two decades. The CMA and ACM “New Artist of the Year” nominee initially garnered attention as a gifted songwriter with credits including hits by Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean and Lee Brice. It is his “high-energy all the way” (El Paso Times) live show that has “the audience dancing all the way up in the rafters of the stadium” (Billboard) that continues to catch the attention of critics out on the road. For tour dates and more visit, thomasrhett.com.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Over the past four decades — give or take a decade break — the illustrious and critically acclaimed Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) have sold over 40 million records worldwide, establishing them as electronic synthesiser pioneers and one of Britain’s best-loved pop groups. Their 13 long players include benchmark-raising classics Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (1980), Organisation (1980), Architecture & Morality (1981), and Dazzle Ships (1983). OMD conquered the United States, and yielded the 1986 hit, "If You Leave" from the Pretty In Pink Soundtrack. They have also achieved 12 top 20 hits on the UK Singles Chart, as well as three top 20 hits on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Following the recent celebration of their 40th anniversary, OMD returned last year with their first new studio album since 2017's highly praised The Punishment Of Luxury, a record entitled Bauhaus Staircase (released via White Noise through The Orchard). The record is regarded as OMD's most explicitly political record and the crowning achievement of their desire to be both Stockhausen and Abba - born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when, as Andy McCluskey admits: "I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom."

Predominantly written, recorded, and mixed by both McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (who has recently become a second-time father), Bauhaus Staircase’s other main external influence was David Watts, mainly known as a rock producer who helmed Sheffield band The Reytons’ recent No 1 album and mixed two tracks on the new OMD record. With Bauhaus Staircase, OMD have created a landmark album worthy of their finest work, showing a duo who are still perfectly in sync 45 years after their first gig at legendary Liverpool club Eric’s. "I’m very happy with what we’ve done on this record," McCluskey summarizes. "I’m comfortable if this is OMD’s last statement."

In celebration of their new LP, OMD have also returned to the stage, headlining North America in the Fall of 2024.

"We are so excited to be able to tour again with a brand new album to showcase,” says Andy McCluskey. “It's been six years since we learned new songs for live performances. The songs from Bauhaus Staircase will fit beautifully into our setlist - we just have to choose which five to play, as we have to treat people to the hits as well!"

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Over the past four decades — give or take a decade break — the illustrious and critically acclaimed Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) have sold over 40 million records worldwide, establishing them as electronic synthesiser pioneers and one of Britain’s best-loved pop groups. Their 13 long players include benchmark-raising classics Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (1980), Organisation (1980), Architecture & Morality (1981), and Dazzle Ships (1983). OMD conquered the United States, and yielded the 1986 hit, "If You Leave" from the Pretty In Pink Soundtrack. They have also achieved 12 top 20 hits on the UK Singles Chart, as well as three top 20 hits on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Following the recent celebration of their 40th anniversary, OMD returned last year with their first new studio album since 2017's highly praised The Punishment Of Luxury, a record entitled Bauhaus Staircase (released via White Noise through The Orchard). The record is regarded as OMD's most explicitly political record and the crowning achievement of their desire to be both Stockhausen and Abba - born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when, as Andy McCluskey admits: "I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom."

Predominantly written, recorded, and mixed by both McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (who has recently become a second-time father), Bauhaus Staircase’s other main external influence was David Watts, mainly known as a rock producer who helmed Sheffield band The Reytons’ recent No 1 album and mixed two tracks on the new OMD record. With Bauhaus Staircase, OMD have created a landmark album worthy of their finest work, showing a duo who are still perfectly in sync 45 years after their first gig at legendary Liverpool club Eric’s. "I’m very happy with what we’ve done on this record," McCluskey summarizes. "I’m comfortable if this is OMD’s last statement."

In celebration of their new LP, OMD have also returned to the stage, headlining North America in the Fall of 2024.

"We are so excited to be able to tour again with a brand new album to showcase,” says Andy McCluskey. “It's been six years since we learned new songs for live performances. The songs from Bauhaus Staircase will fit beautifully into our setlist - we just have to choose which five to play, as we have to treat people to the hits as well!"

Over the past four decades — give or take a decade break — the illustrious and critically acclaimed Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) have sold over 40 million records worldwide, establishing them as electronic synthesiser pioneers and one of Britain’s best-loved pop groups. Their 13 long players include benchmark-raising classics Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (1980), Organisation (1980), Architecture & Morality (1981), and Dazzle Ships (1983). OMD conquered the United States, and yielded the 1986 hit, "If You Leave" from the Pretty In Pink Soundtrack. They have also achieved 12 top 20 hits on the UK Singles Chart, as well as three top 20 hits on the US Billboard Hot 100.

Following the recent celebration of their 40th anniversary, OMD returned last year with their first new studio album since 2017's highly praised The Punishment Of Luxury, a record entitled Bauhaus Staircase (released via White Noise through The Orchard). The record is regarded as OMD's most explicitly political record and the crowning achievement of their desire to be both Stockhausen and Abba - born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when, as Andy McCluskey admits: "I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom."

Predominantly written, recorded, and mixed by both McCluskey and Paul Humphreys (who has recently become a second-time father), Bauhaus Staircase’s other main external influence was David Watts, mainly known as a rock producer who helmed Sheffield band The Reytons’ recent No 1 album and mixed two tracks on the new OMD record. With Bauhaus Staircase, OMD have created a landmark album worthy of their finest work, showing a duo who are still perfectly in sync 45 years after their first gig at legendary Liverpool club Eric’s. "I’m very happy with what we’ve done on this record," McCluskey summarizes. "I’m comfortable if this is OMD’s last statement."

In celebration of their new LP, OMD have also returned to the stage, headlining North America in the Fall of 2024.

"We are so excited to be able to tour again with a brand new album to showcase,” says Andy McCluskey. “It's been six years since we learned new songs for live performances. The songs from Bauhaus Staircase will fit beautifully into our setlist - we just have to choose which five to play, as we have to treat people to the hits as well!"

PLATINUM-selling Thomas Rhett leads the pack as one of country music’s elite new artists with the fastest rising single of his career, the Top 5 GOLD certified upbeat breakup anthem “Crash And Burn” from his upcoming sophomore release TANGLED UP out Sept. 25 (The Valory Music Co.). As "one of country music's most successful – and divisive – new artists" (The Guardian), the new music follows his debut album IT GOES LIKE THIS, which spawned three consecutive No. one hits, making him Billboard’s first male country artist to do so from a debut album in over two decades. The CMA and ACM “New Artist of the Year” nominee initially garnered attention as a gifted songwriter with credits including hits by Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean and Lee Brice. It is his “high-energy all the way” (El Paso Times) live show that has “the audience dancing all the way up in the rafters of the stadium” (Billboard) that continues to catch the attention of critics out on the road. For tour dates and more visit, thomasrhett.com.

BUCKCHERRY

Josh Todd – vocals

Stevie D. – guitar, backing vocals

Kelly LeMieux – bass, backing vocals

Kevin Roentgen – guitar, backing vocals

Ask Josh Todd about the inspiration behind Warpaint, Buckcherry’s eighth studio album--and indeed, the frontman’s goal in making music--and he’s got a ready response: “I want to connect with people, host the party, and give people a night they’re never going to forget,” Todd says. As he sings in Warpaint’s title track, “I wanna have fun blowing out your eardrums keep it rocking state to state.” The Los Angeles-based lineup has been doing exactly that since the 1999 release of their self-titled album. Hits including “Lit Up,” “For the Movies,” “Crazy Bitch” and “Sorry,” not to mention Grammy nominations, international touring and Platinum sales, have solidified Buckcherry’s rock ‘n’ roll bona fides. Warpaint, produced by Mike Plotnikoff (Halestorm, All That Remains), with a March 8, 2019 release date, adds to that impressive legacy, boasting the dynamics and immediacy of the band’s incendiary live show, coupled with Todd’s personal, no-holds-barred lyricism.

Recorded at West Valley Recording Studios with Plotnikoff, who also helmed the band’s 15 album, Todd’s goal for Warpaint was for it to be “sonically current. We didn’t want it to sound retro.” Going into the studio in late 2018 with an arsenal of 30 songs written by Todd and guitarist Stevie D., the band worked around the clock for several weeks to capture the energy of the 11 cuts ultimately chosen for Warpaint. The first single, “Bent,” is anthemic but raw, with big drums and even bigger guitars. And, of course, Todd’s relatable, agro lyrics, as he snarls: “the chaos always turns to rage and now I feel so alone and I’m always insane,” before ultimately “breaking all the rules” and emerging as triumphant and “bulletproof” as the song itself.

Todd and Stevie D. had written together on a few side projects prior to Warpaint: An electronic EP for the Spraygun War project, and songs for Josh Todd and the Conflict. “So when we came to the table for a new Buckcherry album, we were in full song. It was a great foundation to launch this great record,” Todd explains. Following the 2015 release of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Todd was faced with issues “both business and personal. And I’ve grown a lot. I can’t say that it’s been joyous. But any time that happens, I get to a new level, and expressing it through song is something I’ve done my whole life.”

The lyrics of “Right Now” speak to Todd’s goal of living in the moment. “There is no past and there is no future… If you really think about that, it’s heavy,” he says. While rock ‘n’ roll is a spiritual catharsis, the singer also works to stay in that state offstage. “I’m coming up on 24 years of sobriety. I meditate 45 minutes a day, and I focus on the now. So much of society is really ‘contempt prior to investigation,’ and I try to be present and non-judgmental and not come from a place of resentment. So many of the songs on Warpaint reflect that.”

The tune “Warpaint” is about Todd’s own heavily tattooed warrior self—but also much more than that. “When I was a little kid I was fascinated with Native Americans and warpaint. People paint themselves or tattoo themselves to not only show up for battle, but to mark really amazing times in their lives. It’s a celebration. I like people who cut off the lifeboat and go for it, and not look back. I feel Buckcherry is that band. It represents perseverance and passion, and not censoring yourself. Sometimes it’s worked for us and sometimes against us, but we always put our best foot forward.”

Buckcherry is the rare band whose talent has allowed them to get away with using F-bombs in their biggest radio hit—‘Crazy Bitch.’” Yet Todd didn’t hesitate when it came to looking at all sides during the creation of Warpaint. “I don’t censor myself when I write,” he understates. “I use profanity in my everyday life and it’s all around me, and us. So, on this record, I looked at all my lyrics, and if I felt swearing might be overdone, I changed it. But if it was needed, I left it, because, ultimately, I have to be happy with it.”

Warpaint delivers an aural punch, a refreshing boldness even on the ballads, and stellar lead guitar work (check out the fretwork on “Vacuum”) and the album closes with an unexpected kick. Todd explains: “’Radio Song’ is introspective look at myself my part in things. And ‘No Regrets’ is so heavy for me to listen to. Stevie came in with this music, saying he wanted to write a punky, Social Distortion-type song. It was amazing, so I went back to my 15-year-old punk rock self and what was going on with me. I thought about the independent records I listened to then, and what they meant to me, plus all the dysfunction that was going on in my home when I was growing up. And it all came out of me in this song.”

The raucous “Devil in the Details” ends Warpaint with “a fiery burnout. I like to put songs like that deep on the record so that people who are really into your band--for more than just the single--get to discover something cool. Just a little thank-you for sticking around to the end.”

Then, of course, there’s the wild-card on Warpaint: Buckcherry’s take on Nine Inch Nails’ classic “Head like a Hole. It was just done as a lark, live in the studio, but came out so cool it made the album. “Yeah, it was very organic. I don’t know Trent [Reznor] but I really admire him,” Todd says. “He did his own thing and created a sound for himself--and a brand--and really stuck to it. When I listen to Nine Inch Nails, I admire the honesty, and no rules.”

In fact, those “no rules,” are what he judges Buckcherry by: Is there unbridled, reckless honesty? “That’s what I ask myself when I listen to Buckcherry: Would my teenage self-put a stamp of approval on it? If the answer is yes, I can go out and represent and feel great about it. I want to compete at the highest level,” Todd concludes. “Keep the integrity, but still please people. If you can do that, great things happen. I feel like we’ve done that on this record.”

BUCKCHERRY DISCOGRAPHY

Buckcherry, 1999

Time Bomb, 2001

15, 2006

All Night Long, 2010

Confessions, 2013

Rock ‘n’ Roll, 2015

Warpaint, 2019

RÜFÜS DU SOL have emerged as one of the world’s preeminent live electronic acts. The Australian three-piece, known formerly to the world as just RÜFÜS, have thus far won the world over with two platinum-certified albums, ATLAS and Bloom , with a much-anticipated third on the way.

Comprised of members Tyrone Lindqvist, Jon George and James Hunt, RÜFÜS DU SOL first made their break in 2013, when their debut album, ATLAS , reached #1 in Australia. Their sophomore follow-up, 2016’s Bloom , subsequently hit #1 as well, transforming them from national heroes into a rising global phenomenon.

The album, which produced such iconic singles as “You Were Right” and “Innerbloom,” notably spawned a momentous two-year tour, including a milestone appearance at Coachella in 2016.

Now residing in Los Angeles, RÜFÜS DU SOL have spent the past year finishing their third album, largely influenced by the stark desert landscapes of California and their experiences on the road. With a new record on the horizon and a standout two-year tour at their backs, RÜFÜS DU SOL have entered a new era of their career.

“It feels like a new RÜFÜS,” the trio says. “We’re excited about this new music. We’re ambitious as ever.”

PLATINUM-selling Thomas Rhett leads the pack as one of country music’s elite new artists with the fastest rising single of his career, the Top 5 GOLD certified upbeat breakup anthem “Crash And Burn” from his upcoming sophomore release TANGLED UP out Sept. 25 (The Valory Music Co.). As "one of country music's most successful – and divisive – new artists" (The Guardian), the new music follows his debut album IT GOES LIKE THIS, which spawned three consecutive No. one hits, making him Billboard’s first male country artist to do so from a debut album in over two decades. The CMA and ACM “New Artist of the Year” nominee initially garnered attention as a gifted songwriter with credits including hits by Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean and Lee Brice. It is his “high-energy all the way” (El Paso Times) live show that has “the audience dancing all the way up in the rafters of the stadium” (Billboard) that continues to catch the attention of critics out on the road. For tour dates and more visit, thomasrhett.com.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

PLATINUM-selling Thomas Rhett leads the pack as one of country music’s elite new artists with the fastest rising single of his career, the Top 5 GOLD certified upbeat breakup anthem “Crash And Burn” from his upcoming sophomore release TANGLED UP out Sept. 25 (The Valory Music Co.). As "one of country music's most successful – and divisive – new artists" (The Guardian), the new music follows his debut album IT GOES LIKE THIS, which spawned three consecutive No. one hits, making him Billboard’s first male country artist to do so from a debut album in over two decades. The CMA and ACM “New Artist of the Year” nominee initially garnered attention as a gifted songwriter with credits including hits by Florida Georgia Line, Jason Aldean and Lee Brice. It is his “high-energy all the way” (El Paso Times) live show that has “the audience dancing all the way up in the rafters of the stadium” (Billboard) that continues to catch the attention of critics out on the road. For tour dates and more visit, thomasrhett.com.

Riley Green has been compelling Country music fans to raise a drink, shed a tear, and, above all, celebrate where they are from, since his self-titled EP in 2018 debuted with Big Machine Label Group. His songs like the No. 1 PLATINUM hit “There Was This Girl,” the 2X-PLATINUM-certified heart-tugger “I Wish Grandpas Never Died,” and his chart-topping collab with Thomas Rhett, “Half of Me,” have made the Academy of Country Music’s 2020 New Male Artist of the Year synonymous with what Country music does best: making listeners feel something with his no-gimmick, relatable writing and classic feel.

A huge 2023 for the avid sports fan, former athlete (Jacksonville State University quarterback) and outdoorsman, Green secured his third No. 1 single “Different ‘Round Here (Ft. Luke Combs),” played to an average of 65,000 fans each night as direct support on massive tours for Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and released his latest full-length studio album Ain’t My Last Rodeo. The Dann Huff-produced album features his current Top 25-and-climbing single “Damn Good Day To Leave,” and gave a deeper look into the life of good ol’ boy who still lives in his hometown of Jacksonville, AL.

Currently riding a wave of massive success that grows stronger each day, 2024 has been a rocket for Green. He released his Way Out Here EP, which included two solo writes that had critics and fans alike gushing (the poignant “Jesus Saves” and the sultry “Worst Way,” which sparked a frenzy on the internet), the humorous tune “Rather Be,” as well as the wildly viral “you look like you love me” with Ella Langley, which has also taken social media by storm. He played for the biggest Country crowd in UK history (on his first trip across the pond no less), headlined his own (largely sold out) amphitheater tour, hosted his own festival, became one of only three Country artists to grace the cover of Cigar & Spirits and has become one of the most buzzed-about artists in Nashville. With another project on its way this fall, it’s clear, “there’s no slowing down for Riley Green” (Pollstar). See tour dates and learn more at RileyGreenMusic.com.

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

Teddy Swims is a lover. The 29-year-old artist, who merges honeyed soul with raucous rock energy and pleasing pop hooks, writes nearly all his songs about falling in or out of romantic entanglements. He zeroes in his focus on his latest EP, Tough Love—a six-song collection of heartbreak horror stories and earnest declarations of devotion. “To me, that’s just all there is,” he says. “You’re either making love or crying about it.” The Atlanta native, born Jaten Dimsdale, has been tugging at heartstrings since posting a series of covers from his bedroom studio, which generated hundreds of millions of views and scored him a deal with Warner Records. Teddy changed his focus to introspective originals on 2020’s Unlearning EP and garnered praise from American Songwriter, Billboard, Rolling Stone, among others. Soon, performances on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Today, and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert cemented his status as a rising star. With more than 500 million global streams to his credit, as well as a social following that exceeds 8 million, Teddy’s songs of devotion have clearly connected. And part of reaching that audience, for him, is getting to show his love in person.

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

“This whole album is me, who I am and how I want to be seen as an artist,” says Dua Lipa. “I want people to really get to know me, so the album is everything that has happened in my life so far, and every song tells a different story.”

She may be young, but Lipa has plenty of stories to tell. The London-born child of Kosovar parents, she has already been nominated for awards by the BBC and MTV Europe, and was a finalist for the prestigious “Critics’ Choice” prize at the Brit Awards. She also won Best New Artist at the NME Awards, and two European Border Breakers Awards—she was one of only ten global recipients of the EBBA—including the night’s biggest prize, the “Public Choice” award, voted on by fans.

Her strong presence onstage (indicated by her European Festival Award for Best Newcomer of the Year) immediately separates her from so many emerging pop acts. But with 3.5 million in global sales, it’s her singles that have rapidly established her as a rising star—"Be the One" reached the Top Ten in a dozen European territories, "Hotter Than Hell" hit the Top Twenty in the UK, and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” climbed into Billboard’s Top 25 in the US. All of this, mind you, before putting out her first album.

Now, with the release of Dua Lipa, she reveals the full range of her ambitions—not just the dance-floor fire of her singles, but also a more introspective side. “I’ve been describing it as ‘dark pop’ because people have only heard the pop moments, but there are some really dark, singer-songwriter parts that I’m excited about,” she says.

Before Lipa was born, her father was a pop star in his native Kosovo; growing up, she absorbed the music of his favorite artists—Radiohead, Oasis, Stereophonics, Sting. Meanwhile, she was still a regular pop-obsessed kid, singing along to Destiny’s Child and S Club 7 (“stuff that you’d listen with your friends”) and especially Nelly and Pink. Those singers stood out, she says, for their “coolness and honesty—it was pop music, but there was something real about it.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theater School until she was 11, when she and her family moved back to Kosovo, a country which she considers much more complex than its war-torn image. “Kosovo is changing and evolving so much,” she says. “It’s still very poor, there’s lot of places that are really run-down, but every time I go back there’s something new and better happening. There’s so much talent there, and people are starting to find out about it.”

Encouraged by a teacher who would make her perform Alicia Keys and Toni Braxton hits in school, Lipa began to think about singing—which had always been her “playground dream”—more seriously, and convinced her parents to let her move back to London when she was 15. Living with friends, she made it through high school, but failed her first year of A Levels as partying took priority over attendance.

Too ashamed to tell her friends (“I felt so bad, I just wanted to cover it up”), Lipa applied the same tenacity that has propelled her career ever since: She found an intensive one-year study program, got straight As, and was accepted into four universities. Though she wanted to prove that she could meet these academic challenges, her commitment to her music and her vision never wavered.

“I always told myself never to have a plan B - I feel like that's also one of the reasons I'm doing what I'm doing now, because I have never thought about doing anything else.”

Lipa was working in a restaurant, recording covers and posting them on social media, trying to find a way into the music business, when she was noticed on the street by a modeling agency. “Some of my friends were doing it,” she says. “But I was never put up for any good jobs, just random salons and whatever. And they said ‘If you want to do this properly, you need to lose a lot of weight.’ I tried to do it at first, but it made me very unhappy and caused me a lot of issues, a lot of body confidence problems. Modeling sounds so glamorous, but it really wasn’t a successful thing for me.”

"Every woman should have the privilege to love their body and feel sexy just the way they are,” she continues. “Being able to spread that message and to support all my girls who need to be told they’re fucking hot and that they don’t need to change for anyone inspires me and makes me feel I am exactly where I need to be.”

One thing the agency did accomplish, though, was securing Lipa an audition for a commercial for The X Factor—and when her voice appeared in the ad, she eventually drew the attention of a management team working with Lana Del Rey. She signed a deal that allowed her to quit the restaurant and go from working on demos in her spare moments to focusing on recording.

“I always had a really clear idea of what I liked and what I didn’t, which made the process easier,” she says. During her years in Kosovo, she became a huge hip-hop fan; a Method Man/Redman show was her first concert. “I wanted to bring in my love for hip-hop and find some middle ground,’ she says. “Lyrically, the songs have more of a flow—especially ‘Bad Together’ and ‘Last Dance,’ where it’s really fast-paced, like I’m singing a rap but I have a pop chorus. That was always the goal.”

Lipa says that “Hotter Than Hell,” written before she got signed, was the first time she felt in command of her songwriting, but points to “Garden of Eden” as a turning point. “It kind of wrote itself,” she says. “All I had to do was set it off and be open and honest, and the story just happened.”

While recording Dua Lipa in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and London, she was rapidly learning the fearlessness and confidence necessary to write great songs. She says that more personal songs like “Genesis” and “No Goodbyes” indicate where her life is right now.

Lipa recently concluded her first tour, opening for Troye Sivan in the US and headlining dates of her own in the UK. Other than a brief panic attack during her very first show (“luckily people found it endearing, but I was terrified,” she says), performing live quickly became comfortable territory. “I can really be creative and let loose onstage,” she says. “Be really free, just go for it and enjoy it, and get lost in what I’m doing.” The critics instantly took notice: NPR said that she “hypnotized” on stage, while Idolator called her “completely badass” and SPIN raved “she’s headliner material—catch her while you can.”

Perhaps the most emotional experience in Dua Lipa’s young career was her triumphant return to Kosovo for a concert last summer. The appearance drew an astonishing 18,000 fans, and the singer needed a police escort to get from her family’s residence to the venue. “It was the craziest moment of my life,” she says. “Just so insane and so much fun.”

She used the proceeds from the homecoming show to create the Sunny Hill Foundation, named for the neighborhood where her parents reside. “We’re going to give to different charities every month for the youth of Kosovo,” she says. “I just want to do my part, because they’ve done so much for me there.”

This kind of hands-on involvement carries over to Lipa’s relationship with her fans, including close communication on social media and collaborations with her followers on merchandise design. A small group of dedicated Twitter followers rapidly grew into a community too big to keep up with as much as she would like. “We talk about all kinds of things on Twitter, though it’s getting harder now to reply to everything,” she says. “They can tell my moods from my tweets—they ask if I’m feeling OK.

The songs on Dua Lipa announce the arrival of a new force in pop—irresistible on the dance floor, thoughtful under closer inspection, constantly discovering creative possibilities. “I’ve grown a lot as a writer,” Lipa says. “It used to take me a really long time to write a song, but now it’s easier to be more open and say what I’m thinking without having to filter or hide from the people I’m in the room with. Just learning who I am and being able to tell a story.”

Imperial Recordings is excited to announce the release of José González ‘s new record, Vestiges & Claws. The album, his first in seven years, is out on February 17 and was produced by González in his home as well as Svenska Grammofonstudion, both in Gothenburg, Sweden. It consists of years’ worth of musical sketches that in other hands might naturally sprawl wildly in sound and style, but on Vestiges & Claws González has created a collection of songs that cohere just about perfectly, ensuring his position as one of the most important artists of his generation.

“It was no doubt a conscious decision to work without a producer,” said González. “I didn’t want this to be too polished, or too ‘in your face.’ Most of all, it’s fun to be in complete control of the artistic aspect. Also, I was inspired by and picked up a lot of tricks from the producers I have worked with in the past. I like to use distortion and let things be a little overdriven, which gives things a warmer sound. Sometimes people complain that my music is too muddled, but I really do not want a modern crisp sound. I’d much rather aim somewhere between Shuggie Otis and Simon & Garfunkel.”

The result is an album that is less purist, less strict. One can find traces of inspired protest songs and eccentric folk rock on Vestiges & Claws: staccato grooves and rhythms, frustration and optimism. It’s a collection that is simultaneously confident, free and uncertain.

González said, “I started out thinking that I wanted to continue in the same minimalistic style as on my two previous records, but once I started the actual recordings I soon realized that most of the songs turned out better with added guitars and a more beat-like percussion, and with more backing vocals.”

González has been far from idle in the seven years since the release of his last solo record, In Our Nature. Besides making two Junip albums and touring the world both solo and with the band, González has been active in the studio in various contexts. One project in 2013 was José’s input to the The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty soundtrack, directed by and starring Ben Stiller. Besides previously released José and Junip songs, the film also contains exclusively written material as well as an interpretation of John Lennon’s “#9 Dream.” Earlier this autumn, the AIDS awareness group, Red Hot Organization, released the compilation Master Mix: Red Hot + Arthur Russell, where González and guests play a very groovy, sax-laden version of Russell’s “This Is How We Walk On The Moon.” During this time, his song “Far Away” won the “Best Song in A Game” at the Spike Video Awards and Rolling Stone named Junip’s “In Every Direction” a Top 50 single of 2010.

Vestiges & Claws is, however, the first album where he has chosen to include exclusively original material, largely revolving around ideas of civilization, humanism and solidarity.

“I think that might be where there is some sort of common thread on this new record: The zoomed out eye on humanity on a small pale blue dot in a cold, sparse and unfriendly space. The amazing fact that we are here at all, an aim to encourage us to understand ourselves and to make the best of the one life we know we have — after birth and before death. And also, I’ve been okay with using rhymes this time,” González said with a smile. He added, “In general I think that the lyrics are clearer this time. And a little less self-pitying.”

Where Veneer and In Our Nature, might have sounded sparse and barren in parts, Vestiges & Clawshas an altogether new feeling to it, at once warmer and darker than before. He talks about how he’s found inspiration in sprawling 70′s Brazilian productions, American folk rock and West African desert blues this time. And how he’s decided to waive the principle of having everything on the album reproducible in a live context.

González summed it up, “I’ve focused more on the role of being a producer this time around. I’ve spent more time thinking of what’s best for the song and the recording.”

A deep, artful thinker whose singular approach to song writing and sonics sets him worlds apart, José González is in a class by himself. He has a voice. He has a sound. He has a point of view.Vestiges & Claws – musically gorgeous, strikingly profound in lyric — has a unique and quietly visceral power that is as an outstanding addition to what is now an impressive body of work. The album is, without question, the most highly anticipated of his career.