Dua Lipa On Her Collaboration With Coldplay's Chris Martin | The Process | GQ

The first song I ever wrote, I was about five or six. I made it for my mum and I would sing it to her when I was around the house and I would ask her, Mum, please can I keep your dress? Can I please keep your shoes? Can you please? I just wanted to be as pretty as her really. I always start with lyrics. It's always when something significant happens I take it, I write it down and when I go into the studio I then put the words to melody and if I still feel the same way about the words that I've written then I feel like I should definitely carry on with the story. Everything I write about is quite personal and it's all very autobiographical so I'm more inspired by words than by melodies. And then I'd like to call my music Dance Cry because they're all quite sad stories in a way but then with the production I want it to be more pop and I want it to be something that people can dance to. I guess my writing process is kind of crazy. I write so many songs and out of ten I like one. Homesick is, well, a feeling and it was one that I was definitely feeling towards the end of writing the album. When I spend so much time on the road and I spend so much time away from home and I'm travelling so much it's really when I'm in a hot place like LA and it starts raining that I miss London the most. And you spend so much time away and it's like the things that you hate about home are the ones that you miss the most. So the bad weather was definitely, I guess, the main influence behind everything and singing about the reason you make all these little sacrifices is to kind of make your dreams come true and you work really hard because this is something that you've always wanted but there's no denying that you occasionally get homesick and you do miss the rain. With all the features that I've done I've always wanted to work with people that did something quite different to what I do so when I do come together with them it's still quite distinct what I'm able to bring to the table. I was really lucky I got to work and write it with Chris Martin and I was in London prior to going to LA to write and I was in a meeting and somebody had asked me who I would love to work with and I said, oh, I would love to get in the studio with Chris Martin and it was more just me just putting it out there into the world and I didn't expect for one of the lovely women who were in the meeting she said, oh, I work really closely with Coldplay why don't you send me some of the songs from your album and I can send them to Chris, he's very busy but we can see maybe make something work and I was like, okay, cool. So I chose a few songs on the album and I sent them over and I just get an email going, why don't you go down to the studio and go and meet Chris and play him some stuff and I was like, okay, cool. I didn't really think anything was going to come of it. And so I went to the studio and just sat there, me, Chris and his engineer, Bill and we just listened to all the songs on the album and what I was nervous was kind of playing all the songs. It was also really interesting to kind of get feedback from someone who I guess in a way makes popular music but is so different to the kind of music that I make and just to hear their opinion especially as an artist that I appreciate and admire. And he listened to everything and he was like, great why don't we just try and write something else for the album and I was like, right now? He was like, yeah, let's do it and he just sat on the piano and it was kind of crazy hearing Chris play the keys because the second he started playing I was like, oh, this is Coldplay someone who you'd been hearing on the radio I guess your whole life playing less than a metre away from you is really surreal. I had a session the next day so I left and we kind of left it that he would write some of it and I would write some of it and we could come back together and put our ideas but when I left I also thought I was never going to come back so I was kind of mentally prepared to just write it on my own and so I just dropped him a text and I was like, okay, I have this idea and I have this time free I know you're busy, maybe we could get back in together he's like, yeah, come down on Wednesday and let's finish the song and we wrote the whole song Chris started playing some chords on the piano and we just went from there we had mics set up in the room and I was just humming melodies and trying to see what sounds good and we were making up different parts and I guess some of it sounded like words, some of it was just mumbling but it's probably the first time I'd ever done a song based on melody to begin with I knew what the concept was going to be of it seeing as we'd already come up with a title for Homesick and I knew what I was going to write about but it was the first time that I just kind of went on the basis of melody and it was really what kind of drove the song and I went in and I recorded it and then I just went, please, please, please will you sing on it because the whole time when we were writing it, we were singing it together and it just felt so weird when I went into the booth and sang it on my own and he agreed to do it and that's really how it came about Homesick was probably the last song to finish off the album it was really that last trip to LA that I made when I hopped on the plane back to London I was like, OK, I feel like I'm done with the album For this album, it's all been just very personal I feel like I've had a lot to say just because I never had the opportunity to really just put it down and try and tell a story and kind of create a project like that, like an album and be able to allow the fans and listeners to really get to know me on a more personal level so I think I really just had the opportunity to travel and I learnt to be more open and learnt to not be so afraid of my own thoughts and speak up about just things that I felt were really personal to me especially when I would walk in a room with producers and songwriters that I'd never worked with before it really taught me to be more confident and just go out there and just really say what I felt and not be embarrassed and not be afraid of it I guess I just learnt that the only person that was going to get a real honest song out of me was me That's when I feel like I found clarity and I was really able to just write I tend to write quite quickly but this one just felt really easy I guess it was just the perfect closing song