Dua Lipa: Living without my parents helped me mature
Dua Lipa says living without her parents at 15 helped her mature.
The ‘Be the One’ hitmaker was born in London but at the age of 11, her parents moved her back to their hometown of Kosovo, Albania. Knowing she wanted to live in the UK, at the age of 15 she persuaded her parents to let her move back to the British capital with an older Kosovian girl.
Speaking to NME magazine, she said: "There was an older girl from Kosovo moving to London at the same time and my parents knew her parents, so they said I could live with her. Like a kind of guardian."
Although it didn’t work out how they had planned, the 21-year-old singer learned the sort of life skills that most people learned later in life whilst at university.
She said: "The cooking and the cleaning … that was tough. I mean, the realisation that no one was going to clean up after me was tough. But stuff like that really made me grow up before my time. It helped me mature, I guess and made me who I am today.
"I’m really grateful for it, but I do remember it being a struggle. My mum came to visit once, opened my wardrobe and said ‘what are all these clothes?’ I was like ‘those are all the dirty clothes that I’ve never washed.’"
At 18, Dua signed a record deal and since then has worked on hits with Sean Paul and Martin Garrix.
Two years after her debut single ‘New Love’, Dua will be releasing her debut album and will be performing at Glastonbury Festival as well as other festivals during the summer.
