Dua Lipa isn’t going to let criticism get to her. In an upcoming interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, the Radical Optimism musician opened up about the criticism she received after she earned the Best New Artist trophy at the 2019 Grammys.
“I think everything comes in stages and waves. There can be a moment where people really like love you and you feel so supported and you’re like, ‘Oh, this is great.’ Especially in the beginning, I was doing interviews and people were like, ‘How do you deal with hate?’ I’m like I don’t get any,” she says in an exclusive Rolling Stone clip of the interview. “And then that changed really quickly.”
Lipa explained that after she won the coveted Best New Artist award, people tweeted online that she “wasn’t deserving” of the honor. (Rolling Stone recently named winning the trophy as one of the “10 Moments That Made Dua Lipa a Superstar.“)
‘”She’s got no stage presence. She can’t do this. She’s not well equipped. She won’t be here next year though.’ There was a lot of that and that fueled me in a way,” Lipa tells Lowe in the clip. “I try not use criticism as this revenge thing but it does push you in a way.”
“Whenever I see or feel or read anything that goes against what I know is coming … I just kind of take a step back and I just go, ‘All of this is background noise and I should just stick on my path,’” she adds. “Because every time someone has doubted me, I’ve proved them wrong. This is fueling me, this is pushing me to be better, to work hard.”
She ends: “I get a real kick out of proving people wrong.” Well said, Dua. The rest of the interview will air on Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET.
In 2019, Lipa also took home the Grammy for Best Dance Recording for her song with Silk City, “Electricity.” Two years later, Lipa won the award for Best Pop Vocal Album for Future Nostalgia.
Lipa is set to release her third album Radical Optimism on Friday. “It is that feeling of chaos and danger and unexpected things coming into your periphery and remaining calm in the face of it. It felt powerful to me,” she told Rolling Stone of its cover art.
