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Does Dua Lipa lack a “narrative”?


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Posted
4 hours ago, jesus del rey said:

Lets not encourage her to steal Azealia's job

I think Nicki Minaj is the one who actually made a profitable career out of it outside social media.

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Posted
1 minute ago, Cheers said:

Dua's team gave her better music

Better music according to who? I think Dua's music is pretty good and she deserves her global success, but Kylie Minogue's catalog is considered exceptionally good and one of pop's golden standards, and yet, that was not enough to make her an A-lister outside of Europe and her home country.

Posted

I'd argue this is more of a problem with listeners than it is with Dua. People want to think they know what a song is about (or who it's about) before they even hear it. It's a media literacy issue. She's trying to keep her personal life private because it is, but a lazy/ADHD audience in 2024 seems to need narrative in order to connect to the material.

 

Dua is our greatest current popstar please don't let her flop GP.

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Posted

Her brand of popstar thrived in the 00s or 10s, but in the age of social media the only new(ish) artists that stick around are those that fuel the parasocial relationship between themselves and their fans. Not saying that's healthy or a great thing but it's the truth.

 

Her peers have given us glimpses into their love lives, mental health struggles, etc. I know nothing about Dua Lipa other than the fact that she is a pretty woman with a British accent.

Posted

The fact that artists are expected to be exposed in the media one way or another to have anything to say it's quite disturbing.

 

or instead we should normalise pop girls like dua who know how to separate their private lives from their career, because at the end of the day they're human beings and messing up with the media is like a russian roulette where most likely you end up like Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse. just because the artists you mentioned in the OP have not said anything out loud so far, you don't know their battles and what the exposure in the media actually did to them. 
 

y'all need more therapy cos this ain't right 

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Perfect Blue said:

Her brand of popstar thrived in the 00s or 10s, but in the age of social media the only new(ish) artists that stick around are those that fuel the parasocial relationship between themselves and their fans. Not saying that's healthy or a great thing but it's the truth.

 

Her peers have given us glimpses into their love lives, mental health struggles, etc. I know nothing about Dua Lipa other than the fact that she is a pretty woman with a British accent.

Their lives are not for entertainment so in fact the less you know about someone the better chances you don't start giving your opinions (should we talk about all the times y'all think you have the right to say **** about their relationships and people they date?). If you can't enjoy music or see through an artist without knowing the details of their personal lives and struggles (even just glimpses) shows you got a problem, and not the artist. Live your own life, stop projecting! 

Posted

She's just not super tabloid-driven. She's an artist. Not every artist wants or needs gimmicks or to waltz with the media. She just wants to keep feeding us care-free, bratty bops that we can dance and work out to and we love her for it! :gaycatina1::khalyan2:

Posted (edited)

Not someone called @barbiegrande downvoting my response… this kind of behaviour goes beyond atrl and has some serious inner issues to address intimately 

Edited by mrpartyrocker
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Posted

yes and i love it 

 

we don't need a disingenuous narrative about how difficult her life/career/relationships have been. nor do we need any cringeworthy hyperspecific songs about relationships 

 

 

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barbiegrande
Posted (edited)
22 minutes ago, mrpartyrocker said:

Not someone called @barbiegrande downvoting my response… this kind of behaviour goes beyond atrl and has some serious inner issues to address intimately 

It just doesn't make much sense. No music legend has ever made it to legend status by being quiet and keeping their lives private. That's not how celebrity works. If you don't know how to play the game and garner interest, you're just a Spotify playlist staple.

 

Hell, even a Frank Ocean is able to leverage their "mystique". Dua doesn't really have mystique though, she's just there

Edited by barbiegrande
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Posted
1 minute ago, barbiegrande said:

It just doesn't make much sense. No music legend has ever made it to legend status by being quiet and keeping their lives private. That's not how celebrity works. If you don't know how to play the game and garner interest, you're just a Spotify playlist staple

:rip: I'm not going to ask you how old you are, but I'd rather blame it on your immaturity. How do you talk about how celebrity works as if you decide what makes someone interesting enough to end up being called a legend? In fact, other than Beyonce and perhaps Taylor, there are no other current "on their way to be called" legends and that's okay. Should we talk about what happened to MJ, Selena, Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears whom lives ended up being entertainment business and what the media did to them? And what did they get off that? Being called legends? Do you think that's what their lives should be about and everyone should follow the same path? Perhaps people like Dua prefer to be called a faceless spotify cover girl than drag herself into a toxic mess with the media for the sake of more attention from the GP and fans. 
 

 

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Posted
1 hour ago, mrpartyrocker said:

Their lives are not for entertainment so in fact the less you know about someone the better chances you don't start giving your opinions (should we talk about all the times y'all think you have the right to say **** about their relationships and people they date?). If you can't enjoy music or see through an artist without knowing the details of their personal lives and struggles (even just glimpses) shows you got a problem, and not the artist. Live your own life, stop projecting! 

Stop spamming this thread with meltdowns. I promise I'm not emotionally invested in pop stars like you. I'm saying this as a third party pop culture observer not as someone who thinks this is how things oughta be. It's just the truth and nature of a social media-run world.

Posted

most narratives come from stan fiction and fake conspiracies which are all assume MPG follow those non-existence narrative. dua is fine :gayalipacat1:

Posted

Does she need a narrative?

Posted
5 hours ago, DoubleRainbow! said:

No, we don't want every single pop girl to talk about their 1000 relationships 

What else do you want artists to sing about then? Guess we wipe Katy's whole discog.

Posted

She does lack narrative which makes her a bit boring. But ultimately her music is very good and she manages her career well so she should be okay 

Posted
1 hour ago, Perfect Blue said:

Stop spamming this thread with meltdowns. I promise I'm not emotionally invested in pop stars like you. I'm saying this as a third party pop culture observer not as someone who thinks this is how things oughta be. It's just the truth and nature of a social media-run world.

Am I not allowed to comment? How am I invested when I'm the one saying popstars should not expose themselves in the media when you claim that's what they need to do to be "relevant"? You need to grow up and get a life outside of the social media. 

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Posted
27 minutes ago, mrpartyrocker said:

Am I not allowed to comment? How am I invested when I'm the one saying popstars should not expose themselves in the media when you claim that's what they need to do to be "relevant"? You need to grow up and get a life outside of the social media. 

the fact that you're failing at basic reading comprehension… nvm it's not worth it, have a good day.

Posted

She doesn't need to exploit her personal life to sell music.

 

Her songs are inspired by her life and experiences but it doesn't necessarily needs to be on nose.

 

She is smart and cultured woman with wide range of interests and clearly doesn't need to discuss her personal life in tabloids etc.

 

 

 

Posted

I see what OP is talking about, but I feel like this is more about the US audience. Many people nowadays feel the need to know everything (or as much as possible) about their favourite celebrities, they want to feel like there's a connection, almost like they're close friends, that's a reason why artists like Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber managed to build a big and crazy fanbase, and you can see with the second example how part of it left when that connection faded, while the former managed to make it her selling point.

 

Dua clearly isn't one that's willing to tell everyone about her personal life or making friendship bracelets with her fans, she doesn't even use social media like that - nowadays none of them really does but back in their earlier days they all built a relationships with their fans via twitter, tumblr etc. add to that that people perceive upbeat music as "shallow" sometimes, and for that they don't feel the need to dive deeper (compare that to someone like Olivia, when she launched drivers license everybody was waiting for the follow-up fo know more about the narrative she was building).

 

That said, there's chance that Dua simply doesn't care about building that kind of artist-fan relationship and she just wants to make music, tour and enjoy her successful life and there's nothing wrong with that, actually that should be the norm, it's just that people are so used to living through their faves' life and knowing everything that they're baffled when that doesn't happen. In some way I think Dua's team is actually trying to build an identity with this era, she's doing a lot of sketches and stuff involving the public to show off her personality. Yeah she for sure doesn't have a "strong" (and often messy) presence like other pop girls, but she's smart, gorgeous, charismatic in a way effortlessly cool people in real life are. 

 

Personally I don't need that kind of connection to stan Dua, but I'd love to know more about her because she seems genuinely smart and cool.

Posted
12 hours ago, unclefloprry said:

Her narrative is being the gp's IT girl. 

This. every week I see a 100k likes tweet praising her for being relatable and minding her business, her narrative is being everyone's fav unproblematic pop girl who loves vacationing :coffee2:

Posted

The fact that I just know none of the b*tches calling Dua boring have ever bothered to listen to her podcast or read her newsletter (or even just a longform interview), otherwise you would've noticed that she's an intelligent, business-savvy woman who knows her priorities and has found great success that way. But yes, how dare she only care about her art, literature and culture she's interested in and going on vacation instead of engaging with the toxic tabloid culture that literally killed artists in the past? 

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Posted
1 hour ago, ariananext said:

I see what OP is talking about, but I feel like this is more about the US audience. Many people nowadays feel the need to know everything (or as much as possible) about their favourite celebrities, they want to feel like there's a connection, almost like they're close friends, that's a reason why artists like Taylor Swift or Justin Bieber managed to build a big and crazy fanbase, and you can see with the second example how part of it left when that connection faded, while the former managed to make it her selling point.

 

Dua clearly isn't one that's willing to tell everyone about her personal life or making friendship bracelets with her fans, she doesn't even use social media like that - nowadays none of them really does but back in their earlier days they all built a relationships with their fans via twitter, tumblr etc. add to that that people perceive upbeat music as "shallow" sometimes, and for that they don't feel the need to dive deeper (compare that to someone like Olivia, when she launched drivers license everybody was waiting for the follow-up fo know more about the narrative she was building).

 

That said, there's chance that Dua simply doesn't care about building that kind of artist-fan relationship and she just wants to make music, tour and enjoy her successful life and there's nothing wrong with that, actually that should be the norm, it's just that people are so used to living through their faves' life and knowing everything that they're baffled when that doesn't happen. In some way I think Dua's team is actually trying to build an identity with this era, she's doing a lot of sketches and stuff involving the public to show off her personality. Yeah she for sure doesn't have a "strong" (and often messy) presence like other pop girls, but she's smart, gorgeous, charismatic in a way effortlessly cool people in real life are. 

 

Personally I don't need that kind of connection to stan Dua, but I'd love to know more about her because she seems genuinely smart and cool.

I don't think it's recent though. Even going back to the 80s, Madonna and Michael Jackson managed to cultivate a passionate fandom because of how larger than life their personalities were. I think you need to have a clear identity for people to identify with and follow you otherwise you're just Katy Perry and when you eventually try to make something meaningful, people just drop out. You can only make "bops" for so long, even Rihanna had the cool, unbothered badgalriri persona. 

Posted

She should sing about her love of vacations

Posted (edited)

I appreciate who speaks about personal life/things (love, family, friends, break up etc) in music because they can make a connection with people who listen and went through the same. But this is not a rule, music is something to enjoy for many reasons. As so artists can make music about what the feel, private or not.

Edited by Sad Serenade
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