Dua Lipa is on the cover of ELLE USA‘s May issue with photography by Dan Beleiu. You can read the interview below. Dua also spoke to ELLE’s resident astrologists, The AstroTwins, who discover Dua is a very “unLeo” Leo in a lot of ways. The video of this conversation is also below!

The first time Dua Lipa went clubbing, she was just a wisp of a tween girl in Kosovo. The UK-born pop star realizes how absurd it sounds as she explains it. Seated in her home office in London, flanked by shelves teeming with books, she thumbs through her phone for a blurry image of a photo from that fateful night—as if to prove to the two of us that it did indeed happen. At the center of the photo is a young Lipa dressed in white crochet, smiling brightly next to her much taller cousin and an entourage of stylish women.

Clubbing is a Lipa family tradition; it’s also why she wasn’t fazed when, while out one night on New York City’s Lower East Side with Charli XCX, she ran into her parents partying at The Box. “We celebrate everything and anything, and we just love a party,” she explains. “When I go to my aunt’s house, it all starts off pretty tame….Then the music comes on, and we’re all dancing in the house. And that’s a Tuesday!”

Now 28, Lipa has since made a name for herself as Britain’s leading lady of disco. On the dance floor, she plays an almighty oracle, a savvy young agony aunt for lovelorn club kids, desperate for the sobering real talk she’s dispensed in hits like “New Rules” and “Don’t Start Now.”

But long before she penned feminist electro-pop smashes that now stream by the billions, her family knew her as just Dua, their precocious eldest daughter who left Kosovo as a teen to fulfill her pop star dreams by herself in London. That’s when she fully harnessed what she calls her “big sister energy” in her life and music; one can hear it now in the unshakable authority with which she sings her songs.

“She is such a big sister,” says songwriter Caroline Ailin, who first recognized Lipa’s insightful nature when they met almost a decade ago. “You process your feelings [with her], but you also walk away feeling empowered.”

Lipa recently announced her new record, Radical Optimism, out this month. She landed on the title after a friend introduced her to the concept—seeking the silver linings in an otherwise challenging world—which seemed to gel with her ethos, as a person and an artist. “It struck me,” she said in a press statement, “the idea of going through chaos gracefully and feeling like you can weather any storm.”

In the time she spent shaping her new album, Lipa decided she would first take her own advice and start calling all the shots: in her career, in her love life, and in her image. In 2022, she ended her longtime partnership with management and publishing company TaP Music, whose roster includes outsider divas like Lana Del Rey and Caroline Polachek. Lipa subsequently hired her father as her manager and bought back the rights and masters for her entire catalog.

In February, Lipa inaugurated her liberated new era at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Gracing the red carpet in a custom Courrèges chain mail gown, her dyed red tresses cascading past her shoulders, she channeled a dauntless warrior queen. That night, she debuted the single “Training Season,” a new song from Radical Optimism. A jaunty disco track with theatrical flourishes of acoustic guitars, synthesizers, and live drums, it shows Lipa ramping up her bravado. “Don’t wanna have to teach you how to love me right,” she sings, issuing a notice to any less-than-suitable suitors looking to waste her time: She’s in the big leagues now. “I had gone into the studio and just said the line, ‘Training season’s over!’” Lipa recalls.

Written in November 2022, “Training Season” is a reflection on a string of dates and long-term relationships, mostly set up by her friends. Lipa’s previous relationships include Bella and Gigi’s brother Anwar Hadid, and French director Romain Gavras; more recently, she was spotted vacationing in Mexico with British actor Callum Turner. “As long as everyone knows where they stand, then you’re good,” she says with a shrug.

She speaks only obliquely of her love life these days, preferring to drop hints in song. “I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to write down what I want,’” she says of “Training Season.” “The power of manifestation and writing things into existence with the power of words. When you know your worth, you know what you want and what you don’t want.”

“I was talking about this with one of my dancers today, because she was going through a breakup—when I was single, I didn’t wish it away. You learn so much about yourself, you know, whether it’s going on a date or spending that time alone. In the silence, you figure out who you really are,” she says. “In the grand scheme of things, I was doing research.”

Radical Optimism was formulated with a crack team of co-songwriters and producers: Ailin, her trusted writer; Tobias Jesso Jr., hitmaker for Adele and Harry Styles; and Danny L Harle, PC Music alumnus and self-described “rave consultant.” As a massive fan of the Australian psych act Tame Impala, Lipa also tapped bandleader Kevin Parkerto join her crew in London. “We called it The Band,” Parker says. “Not an old-school band, but a spiritual band. Each morning going into the studio, I felt like I was in the Beatles!”

Inspired in part by the freedom-seeking spirit underpinning UK club culture, Radical Optimism dovetails neatly with the recent resurgence of two nu-disco queens who rocked the clubs in the Y2K era: Kylie Minogue, who came back hard last year with “Padam Padam”; and of course Sophie Ellis-Bextor, whose “Murder on the Dancefloor” needle drop in Saltburn landed her on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time ever. In Radical Optimism, Lipa brings together live and electronic instruments to fashion her own global groove. The result is a cosmopolitan dance-pop record with a 1970s flair, and a vibrant, resounding affirmation of life.

“Dua had this focus on finding this sound, which was so elusive,” Parker adds. “But it was nice to be in the engine room of the creative process, rather than worry about being the face of it. It was the experience that I’ve been waiting for.”

“Houdini,” the first single off the album, was born shortly after Parker teased out a bass line that he’d recorded for himself, weeks before their studio sessions. Lipa was quick to put her own stamp on it, introducing a moody post-disco melody. “She started singing, and it just immediately made sense,” Parker says. “This feeling of early-’80s sleaze, in some strange, dark, sweaty club. Gloriously suffocating. Hypnotic.”

Ailin has worked with Lipa since before they penned, along with Emily Warren and Ian Kirkpatrick, her 2017 breakout hit, “New Rules”—a dance-worthy laundry list of what-not-to-dos when an ex comes orbiting back around post-breakup. Venting about real life, Ailin explains, became essential to their creative process: “We have a little yap about what’s going on, and from that it turns into a pop song.” Lipa’s moments of unmanicured catharsis, Ailin says, are what yield her most penetrating lyrics; using the firm contralto of her voice, she imparts a pop wisdom that’s as incisive as it is compassionate.

“That’s her superpower,” Ailin says. “It’s hard not to feel like you’re the strongest person next to her. I think she lends a little bit of that to all of us sometimes.”

Born in London in 1995, Lipa is the eldest of three children in a Kosovar-Albanian family. Her parents sought refuge in the UK in 1992, before Dua was born, because of political instability in Kosovo at the time. Prior to their emigration, Dua’s father, Dukagjin, sang and played guitar in a rock band called Oda, and her mother, Anesa, studied law. The Lipas settled in the Camden area of London, and Dua was raised to speak Albanian at home and English at school.

Dua’s family returned to Kosovo in 2006, while it was still under the supervision of the United Nations. The country declared independence from neighboring Serbia in 2008, making it the youngest country in Europe. As she grew into her teens, Dua began to meditate on the horrific stories of ethnic cleansing and war crimes committed against Kosovar Albanians. It prompted a critical perspective shift for her, one that informs her values to this very day—whether that means being a fierce advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, or calling for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.

“I heard stories from friends [in Kosovo] who lost family members. Houses burned. I saw them. When you have that direct communication with people who have been through [war], it opens up a completely new world, and it did for me,” she says. “I feel very close to [those suffering] injustices in the world, or inequality. Whether that be war, or coming out to your family, everyone’s got a different experience…It’s about support and learning together.”

Lipa was only 15 when she returned to London alone to pursue a music career. She moved into a flat in Camden with an Albanian family friend who was attending university. After watching her younger siblings grow up themselves, it was a move that’s almost unfathomable to her now. “I said to my parents: ‘I don’t know how you let me do that,’” she admits. “But I knew that I didn’t have the same opportunities that I would have in Kosovo. I was so determined. I think my parents saw parts of themselves in me, and that allowed for them to be so open-hearted and generous with that trust.”

By 17, she completed her GCSEs, or secondary school certification, and worked as a restaurant hostess to make ends meet. Working in nightclubs as a teen inevitably steeled her for the misogyny and exploitation baked into a male-dominated music industry. If she sounds well beyond her years in her songs, it’s because she earned it. “When I started [songwriting], I worked at La Bodega Negra, a Mexican restaurant that looked like a sex shop,” she recalls. “I’d finish work, then go out to whatever nightclub was happening until, like, three in the morning. Then I would wake up and go to the studio until I had my shift again at, like, 8 P.M. The music I [made] was reflective of my every day, or every night.”

After ascending the charts again with 2018’s “One Kiss” with Calvin Harris, Lipa claimed the title of Best New Artist at the 2019 Grammys. She chased her success the following year with the release of her Grammy-winning sophomore album, Future Nostalgia, which leaked early on in the COVID-19 quarantine in late March of 2020. Despite the pandemic nearly extinguishing the club scene, Future Nostalgia became the singer’s first number one album in the UK, and rendered her one of the most-listened-to female artists on Spotify. (More recently, she became the first female artist to have four songs each with over 2 billion streams on the platform.)

Upon wrapping her Future Nostalgia world tour in December 2022, Lipa finally had time to exhale, for what felt like the first time in her adult life. She embarked on getaways from the Mediterranean to India this past year, and relished dining experiences with her family and friends in tow. After she posted her vacation photos on Instagram, the internet began dubbing her the “Vacanza Queen” poking fun at her for presumably going off gallivanting for months at a time.

At first, the criticism felt dismissive of the years she spent without her family, toiling her way into pop superstardom. Yet perhaps it’s not just the glamorous photos from exotic locales, but also her efficiency as an artist that have concealed her hard work, making it seem magically effortless—the curse of being extremely capable all her life.

Lipa’s routine is still so regimented that it made an impression on Parker when they worked together in London. “Dua is, like, the most punctual person,” he says. “For most pop stars, it’s impossible to get to places on time. But Dua…she’s, like, apologizing profusely if she’s five minutes late!”

Through her media company, Service95, a weekly email newsletter-turned-podcast-turned book club, she has interviewed the Afghan American novelist Khaled Hosseini and the rock’n’ roll poet Patti Smith. She’s also co-executive producing Camden, a new documentary in conjunction with Disney+ that showcases the history of her home borough in London and the many influential artists who grew up there, from Madness to Amy Winehouse.

“I’ve been busy for almost 10 years” she says. “Every single day, I’ve had some bit of work to do. But people are going to say something anyway. People say a lot of mean things about a lot of people.” And if being Vacanza Queen “is what I’m getting, then I’ll take it. Whether I’m performing or going out, if it’s not fun, I don’t want it,” she says. “You have to make room for joy. The world can be burning down, but goddamn…if you didn’t spend any of your life trying to be happy, I don’t know what you’ve done.”

Hair by Ali Pirzadeh at Streeters; makeup by Sam Visser for YSL Beauty; manicure by Michelle Humphrey at LMC Worldwide; set design by Jabez Bartlett at Streeters; choreographed by Ryan Chappell; produced by WA Productions.

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Dua Lipa shares behind the scenes of her ‘Illusion’ music video in Billboard’s How It Went Down series.

“Dua Lipa talks about an illusion she faced during the talking stage of a relationship, how it led to the creation of her new track ‘Illusion’ and the Spanish twist in her music video..”

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Dua Lipa is the first 2024 TIME 100 cover star. She spoke to TIME about her new album, ‘Radical Optimism,’ her childhood in Kosovo, and the power of manifestation. Read the full interview below or on the TIME website here.

Dua Lipa is a master escape artist. In her nu-disco bop “Houdini,” she sings about someone with so little patience for superficial gestures that she’ll vanish if a potential suitor doesn’t go above and beyond. In the cavernous LA studio where we met in February, Lipa performs a different sort of disappearing act — which is to say, she materializes very suddenly when it’s time for us to chat, and, 45 minutes later, is gone just as abruptly.

Her swift appearance and retreat shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has followed her frenetic pace over the past few years. Yes, Lipa is a global superstar who has had five Top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 and appeared in last year’s most successful movie, but her output has only been possible because she makes use of every minute. The human being behind the hype seems to have a plan for everything — since the beginning of her career, she has taken a 24-hour day and stretched it out like taffy, carefully examining next steps and turning ideas into action.

Lipa’s deliberate approach to her work tracks with what she told TIME with a grin in 2017: “I’d like to take over the world… If I could.” The Dua Lipa from that interview is noticeably younger and more eager — an early 20-something on the verge of massive commercial success, thanks in part to her hooks-packed self-titled debut album, which housed gleaming electro-pop tracks such as “IDGAF,” “New Rules,” and “Be the One.” Lipa, now 28, is more composed but no less enthusiastic about the year ahead, which includes the May 3 release of Radical Optimism, her much-hyped third studio album. After all, she’s been manifesting it for seven years — perhaps even longer.

“Since I was very little, I’ve jotted down things I dreamt for myself,” the English-Albanian singer and songwriter says in an interview after her TIME100 cover shoot. “I’ve always planned ahead. Although surprises arise that I evaluate in the moment, there’s always a long-term goal.”

Sitting with her legs crossed in a black Jacquemus minidress, her red-tinted hair falling in loose waves around her face, Lipa speaks precisely, carefully considering each question before answering. Pop stars, especially those with incredibly successful careers, are often accused of being calculating. But in person, Lipa comes across as intensely thoughtful, whether she’s revealing what’s in store on Radical Optimism or sharing travel tips (pack light, bring books) and, in keeping with her one-time modeling career, poised. “It’s important to just write things down,” she says. “You never know what could come true.”

Does Lipa believe in the power of manifestation? Absolutely. “Manifesting is a big thing for me,” she admits. “I stand very firmly in the belief of putting things into the world. Subconsciously, you just work towards them. Nothing’s ever too big.”

Though Lipa chuckles at her younger self declaring her plans to take over the world, it’s hard to deny her stratospheric rise. Lipa was born in London in 1995 to Kosovo-Albanian parents Anesa and Dukagjin Lipa, who left Pristina as refugees in the early ‘90s. When Lipa was 11, her family moved back to Kosovo — a few years later, Lipa would persuade her parents to allow her to return to London to pursue a career in music.

While attending theater school as a teenager, Lipa started uploading covers to YouTube and SoundCloud, juggled restaurant and nightclub server gigs, and signed with a modeling agency. In 2013, Lipa got her first job singing — a version of Sister Sledge’s “Lost in Music” for a televised X Factor ad — which led to a publishing deal with TaP Music, and later, a record deal with Warner Bros. (Lipa left TaP’s artist roster in 2022, and bought her publishing rights back last fall.)

Lipa’s glimmering debut single, “New Love,” dropped in 2015, and was quickly followed up by the rhythmic “Be the One.” She rolled out more singles — “Hotter Than Hell” and “Blow Your Mind (Mwah)” — plus a dynamic collaboration with Sean Paul (“No Lie”) in 2016. By summer 2017, Lipa would finally unveil her self-titled studio debut.

Following the success of Dua Lipa, which earned her five nominations at the 2018 Brit Awards (she won British Breakthrough Act and British Female Solo Artist), Lipa unleashed her critically acclaimed 2020 homage to disco, Future Nostalgia, a shimmering, modernist take on the ‘70s genre which won her the Brit Award for British Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Lipa’s success led to her involvement in Barbie. Her jubilant “Dance the Night,” which she co-wrote with Mark Ronson, soundtracks a pivotal scene in Greta Gerwig’s box-office smash. (The film also features a cameo from the pop singer as mermaid Barbie.) Earlier this year, Lipa appeared in the spy thriller Argylle, where she plays a Bond-esque villain named LaGrange. “I loved being on set,” Lipa says. “I love the idea of embodying a different character and having an assignment. I also love when I go to a photo shoot, and I can completely change up my look. It gives me like a different persona.”

Lipa, who was granted Albanian citizenship in 2022, also speaks passionately about her dual heritage, as well as the importance of Kosovo getting its visa liberalization, which allows nationals to travel freely around Europe’s borderless zone. “I’m from two places at the same time,” she says. “Being from Kosovo is just such a big part of who I am, and getting my Albanian citizenship was really exciting.”

“For a population in Kosovo, where over 50% is under 25 years old, it’s one of the youngest populations in Europe,” Lipa continues. “The opportunity to be able to travel freely is really important. There are all these kids who have big dreams and hopes and want to be able to move around, travel, and explore. They want to evolve and grow and hope that maybe they can be heard and seen in a different way. Now that their passports mean something, it feels really good.”

To honor her roots, Lipa is equally committed to shifting how her Western fanbase might perceive countries like Kosovo and Albania. “When people think about Kosovo, I don’t want them to be like, ‘Oh, war-torn Kosovo.’ There’s so much more to it,” she says. “We do a festival in Pristina, me and my dad, that’s about getting people from all over the world to come down and see how different it is to what they expect — whether that’s artists from all around the world, or fans that come in to see artists they love from neighboring countries. I know when I was living in Kosovo, none of my favorite artists were coming there. It is my biggest dream to be able to bring that to the kids there.”

To be a pop star — or any famous person in 2024 — requires diversification. On top of music and “little baby roles,” as she calls them, Lipa also moonlights as a journalist; Dua Lipa: At Your Service was named one of the Best Podcasts of 2022 by Spotify and features a who’s-who of celebrity guests from a variety of fields, from pop contemporary Billie Eilish to relationship guru Esther Perel. Meanwhile, Lipa launched a book club and lifestyle newsletter, Service95, in early 2022. (She name-checks Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland as a recent favorite.)

For the time being, however, Lipa’s primary focus is getting her third album out the door. Naturally, she envisioned what it would sound like years in advance. “I remember when I was working on my first album, I was making notes on what my third album was going to be,” Lipa says. “It’s mad to think about, but I remember speaking to my close friend and A&R Joe [Kentish], ‘Maybe album three, I could work with [Tame Impala’s] Kevin Parker,’ and he was like, ‘Alright, hold your horses, let’s take baby steps.’”

Lipa’s theory at the time was that if her first two albums were well received, “maybe I’d be deserving to be in a room with an artist I so deeply admire and look up to.” Not only is Tame Impala’s Parker a producer on the 11-track project, but Lipa assembled a tight-knit team of alt/indie-pop luminaries, including longtime co-writer Caroline Ailin, Danny L Harle, and Tobias Jesso Jr., to be in the studio with her.

“The record as a whole is more mature,” Lipa shares of her latest work, which features the singles “Houdini,” “Training Season,” and “Illusion.” Describing the album as being heavily inspired by ‘80s Scottish rockers Primal Scream and famed English trip-hop collective Massive Attack (a noted divergence from the mirrorball-spinning Future Nostalgia), she continues: “I’m definitely not the same person I was when I wrote my first album. I’ve evolved and learned so much… taking it as it comes, not seeing anything as bad or something as a setback. That involves a lot of growing and understanding myself, knowing my worth, whether it be in business, love, or friendship.

“I’m just a different person, so of course this record is going to be different,” Lipa muses on leaning into new sonic territory. “I have different thoughts, wants, needs, and perspectives. I’ve done a 180 on myself… I feel the most confident at this point in my life.”

The confidence is paying off, especially as she’s recently launched Radical22, an independent media and management company, which signed a global publishing administration deal with Warner Chappell Music. “I’ve been planting seeds for my other endeavors my whole life,” Lipa says. “It’s a way for me to be able to show everyone other sides to who I am. I love my music career and the fact that it gives me so much opportunity for expression. But it’s not the only thing I am.”

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ELLE wonder how optimistic Dua Lipa really is.

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Dua Lipa recently spoke to Variety about her upcoming album Radical Optimism. You can read the interview below:

What was it about the idea of “radical optimism” that inspired you to use it as your album title?
Radical optimism, in itself, felt like something that really resonated with me over the past few years. It felt like even through my last record and into the new one, it was just so much about learning from every experience, taking everything as a lesson or seeing it as a gift in some way, whether it was good or whether it was bad, and just appreciating that even from some bad situations, something great can come of it, or I can grow to be a better or stronger person from all of it.

I think that was something that propelled me in so many different ways. I think being outside of your comfort zone is something I talk about a lot, because that’s where you do the most growing, which is in the most uncomfortable situations and in the most unexpected situations and in the moments where you don’t think… You go, “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” but it does. How do you adapt in those moments? How do you walk through the fire? How do you push through? And that is something that really resonated with me.

When you talk about uncomfortable moments, what are you referring to exactly?
Well it can be anything, from a breakup to a personal relationship, a work relationship, a friendship, something going wrong or all your stuff is missing from your freight cargo when you’re on tour and you don’t have any of your costumes, which has happened. It can be anything. At any moment, life is so unpredictable and people and things can surprise you all the time, and I think a quality of mine that I like, if I can say, is just remaining open-hearted even when things don’t go right and not shutting down and being like, this is something that really hurt me and I’m never going to trust anyone in my life ever again. You can’t go through life in that way. If someone is out there with any wrong or malicious intent or whatever and it happens to you, maybe it was there for a reason. You’re meant to see it, you’re meant to go through it. So for that, I’m grateful.

You’re coming off of “Future Nostalgia,” which was such a massive record for you. How did you get back into the creative space to begin this next chapter, and do you feel the weight of “Future Nostalgia” going into that?
For me, writing for my new album, for “Radical Optimism,” everything was delayed because I had been on tour, and during that tour, every break that I had in between, I went to the studio. So I was breaking away from the “Future Nostalgia” world and going into “Radical Optimism.” So for me, it was very important to have a sonic separation and to try to experiment with different sounds. And it took me a while, I started actually writing in 2021 but I didn’t really get anything until my very first session with Kevin Parker, Danny L. Harle, Tobias [Jesso Jr.] and Caroline [Ailin], which was in June 2022. So it was just a lot of writing and writing and figuring out where I was going and experimenting with different sounds until I was like, I’ve got it, I know where I’m headed. There’s always one song that’s that eureka moment that takes you into the next phase of the album. And I wanted a sonic departure. I also fell in love so much with the live versions of the songs, and so I loved having that organic musicality behind it, have that be really prevalent throughout the whole new album. So yeah, that’s what I aimed to do.

You talk about your eureka moment. What was that for you?
It was a song called “Illusion.” That was a song where I felt like lyrically, I got this radical optimism. I felt very strong in the moment when I was writing that song, because it was really seeing past someone’s bullshit, I guess, for lack of a better word. And understanding it for what it is and just entertaining it for the hell of it, even though you see what’s happening. But I felt in a stronger power of position, because I was like maybe before, I would have fallen for something like this and now I can dance with the illusion, and it’s something for me too, you know? I think musically also, when Kevin and Danny came together and it was the live drums and the synths and the big music breakdown, in my head the big dance moment, when all those came together it was just a feeling. I had a feeling and I was like, now I have something to bounce off of. And in that first week, even though sonically they’re in the same world but they’re very different, I wrote “Illusion” and then I wrote “Happy for You” and “Happy for You” is a much bigger ballad, in a way. Somewhat. I wouldn’t really classify it as a ballad. Because I don’t do songs that are slow and big and emotional, but I just put them in the ballad section, I’m like, I don’t do those. But this feels almost in a world where I can really have this epic singing record that I was able to be very vulnerable and open in. But still sonically, it has this tremolo sound that I’m really obsessed with and it’s Kevin’s voice replicated. We use it as a sample throughout. That was just a moment for me to be really vulnerable and open and honest in what was happening in my life at that point. But I feel overall, in this whole record, I just grew as I was writing. I feel like I matured throughout.

It feels like on this album, you sing a little differently, like from your diaphragm, putting a lot of raw emotion into it. Did you feel any difference singing and performing while recording this album, versus with previous records?
Yeah, for sure. I think my voice has changed. Especially when I listened to my earlier records. I think being on tour for a whole year, in 2022, and then also recording the record, like it’s a muscle, so I was using it every night. I was getting stronger, I was able to run and sing and dance and do all of that at the same time. So I feel like my vocal capabilities just got better. And I have much more control over my own voice. And I think in the beginning, for sure, my first tour I was figuring that out. I was losing my voice all the time, I was really nervous about getting sick. All my fears were connected to my voice, my throat. Like, I’m not going to be able to do this today because I might lose my voice and then I can’t sing. And I’m also past that where every morning when I’d wake up, if I wasn’t feeling well, I’d be like, alright, hot shower, cup of tea. And I’ll be good to go. It’s so in your mind as well. I think I strained my voice because I was so nervous before of losing it that now I’m much freer and much more confident. I feel like I’ve just learned to use my voice and my body in a way that’s very strong.

You’ve said that this album is inspired by Britpop, but it still sounds like a hard-nosed pop record. How did Britpop inspire you and speak to how the songs were shaped?
Well, for me, I think the Britpop element that really came to me was the influences of Oasis and Massive Attack and Portishead and Primal Scream, and the freedom and the energy those records had. I love the experimentation behind it. And of course, it’s a pop record. I’m a pop artist, that’s what I do. But I think overall, the different sounds that are being used, the different breaks in the music, the use of musical samples, whether that’s with Kevin’s voice or with the different instruments that we used, overall it was me going completely out of what I knew, and exploring something different. And that’s what I got from my inspiration. I wasn’t going into Britpop and being like, I’m making this record that sounds exactly like… Because it doesn’t. But it’s a feeling that they portray that when I hear “Teardrop” by Massive Attack and I’m like, how did this song even come to be? It feels like it just happened in a moment of real freedom and writing and emotion, and I think that was just the feeling I was trying to convey more than anything.

The album cover is a stunning shot. What made you go in this artistic direction?
I feel like this screams radical optimism to me. Just being in this setting, being very calm in the moment… I’m in deep waters, I’m in with a shark and I’m remaining calm and collected throughout. That is radical optimism to me. I think everything about this record has been [about] being in the chaos and remaining grounded throughout. When I saw it, when all the pictures were printed out, this was it. This was my first instinct. This is radical optimism to me.

What’s the big statement that you are trying to make with this record, and how do you hope people receive that?
I think for me, the importance of understanding that when things are bad, there’s always some light at the end of the tunnel. I always think about it like, when I’m in the midst of a mess of turmoil or everything’s going wrong, I always tell myself, in a couple months, I’m gonna look back on that moment, and be like, thank God I walked through it. I didn’t decide to hide or not deal with the problem at hand, whatever it is, but actually choose to go through it. And that’s how I grew. And I feel like that just overall, especially in the world right now, I think it’s important that we just learn to walk through the fire and not hide away from it, or shy away from it. That’s just optimism. It’s probably the most daring thing we can do. Sometimes.

At least, for me, I used to say that I used to be able to write songs way easier when I was sad. Because that was more of a tangible emotion that you can hold on to, and you can write about. But to write about something when you’re happy without feeling like you’re compromising yourself or making this like cheesy pop song or whatever, and making it something that’s deep and emotional, but it is optimistic, is actually way harder. And so, sometimes being optimistic isn’t the easiest thing to do. But it’s the most important thing throughout because it’s the thing that’s going to carry us into the next stage.

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