FOR chart-topping superstar Dua Lipa, the conversation about sex never stops at One Kiss.
The pop beauty, 28, thinks lovers should leave embarrassment at the bedroom door and be completely honest about their needs.
Dua, who hit No1 last week with her single Dance The Night, insists: “Not talking about sex with the person you are having sex with is a weird anomaly for me.
“I think it’s important to normalise the conversation around sex and make it a topic that we can speak about more freely, so we can let go of the guilt and the shame that surrounds it.”
But while she believes in being brave in bed, when it comes to finding love the singer is very much an old-fashioned girl at heart.
She is not a fan of match-making apps such as Tinder and Bumble because, she says, they have taken away all the spontaneity in favour of an online search that can feel a bit “unsexy”.
Dua, whose other chart smashes include New Rules, One Kiss and Electricity, explains: “I’ve got so many friends on dating apps and sometimes it works.
“But the idea of meeting in the community, through friends, starting conversations and doing things that don’t feel so clinical is probably the best way to go about it.”
She adds: “The erasing of uncertainty feels a little bit unsexy.
“There is something about the unknown that is exciting — going with the flow.
“You want to know you are heading in the right direction and then you can leave the rest to life taking its course.”
The singer is currently in a relationship with French music video director Romain Gavras, 42, who used to date Rita Ora. And the couple met through friends, not online.
Dua was with model Anwar Hadid, 24, the younger brother of Gigi and Bella Hadid for two years until 2021.
In December 2022 it was rumoured she was seeing First Class singer Jack Harlow, 24, who had previously written a song named after her.
She was also spotted in New York with US presenter Trevor Noah, 38, in September 2022.
Dua and Romain only began seeing each other earlier this year, but already seem to be getting serious.
Last week, Dua introduced her new man to her mum Anesa and dad Dukagjin at a restaurant in Ibiza, where she celebrated her 28th birthday.
She believes strongly in staying faithful, but knows it is not easy.
“It demands strength and maturity,” Dua says. “Before, people used to get lots of different things from different people within their community.
“Now people base all their happiness on one person. We want to find the one who fulfils everything — our romantic needs, our sexual needs, our need for a best friend.”
The secret of making love last is to find the fun, and to have realistic expectations, she adds.
“It’s always so fun — and it goes back to that idea of keeping things fresh — to find ways to continue to be curious about your partner.
“So much of what I read about relationships these days is about the ‘roommate phase’ where you feel like you’re living together but you’re not romantically involved any more.
“What can you do to ensure your interest in the relationship never dies?
“And are we wrecking relationships by trying to be even happier when we are plenty happy to begin with?”
Dua has had plenty to be happy about lately — romantically and in her career.
Her biggest birthday present was the news she had claimed her fourth No1 with single Dance The Night, which features on the soundtrack of the Barbie movie.
The singer responded by posting a photo of her own self-titled Barbie doll on Instagram, along with the words “Birthday week going strong”.
Dua has made an estimated £60million from a string of hits and has also won three Grammy awards and six Brits.
She clocked up 82 gigs on her Future Nostalgia world tour, named after her second album.
And One Kiss, featuring Calvin Harris, was the longest-running No1 single by a female artist in 2018.
Her success is particularly impressive given she is the daughter of Kosovo-Albanian immigrants who fled the Bosnian war in 1992 and lived in a council flat in London.
“Everything was Albanian at home, and English was my school life,” she said in 2021.
“She learned the cello at school and shares her passion for music with her dad, who was well known in Kosovo as a singer and guitarist with rock band Oda.
Together, they set up the Sunny Hill Festival in Pristina.
It is Kosovo’s biggest music festival and a charity fundraiser, which has starred Miley Cyrus, Stormzy and Calvin Harris as well as a host of local artists.
Comic Jack Whitehall dubbed Dukagjin “the best-looking dad in the music industry” at the 2019 Brit Awards. But Dua already knew she had great genes.
“Boys at school would say, ‘Your mum’s hot’. Girls would say, ‘Your dad’s so fit’,” she said in 2018. “It’s funny, but as a kid it made me blush.”
On her At Your Service BBC podcast, Dua says she had “no inhibitions” when she was younger. But she suffered bouts of anxiety about her musical ability.
“A lot of the time I feel like I am making it up as I go along,” she says.
Dua is a firm believer in “the ten- thousand hours” concept — the idea that you have to “keep practising and being s**t before you are OK”.
She continues: “I love performing and being on the road. It took me a while to get really confident though.
“Just learning the showmanship of addressing a crowd . . . because that’s another thing you have to do.
“It’s not just, ‘I’m going to dance and sing’, it’s the interaction with other people. Practice got me there.”
Dua’s third studio album is due out next year. She says: “I sharpened my focus between my first and second records. I think the same is happening with my third, too.
“The easiest thing is to stay in your comfort zone. But when you are outside your comfort zone, that’s where things get interesting, even if it is scary.”
Dua feels the same way about relationships, saying: “You have to really want to put the work in.
So many people approach relationships with deadlines in mind — this is when we say we are dating, this is when we move in, this is when we get married. But are these chats productive?
“Communication is key, but it’s also one of the first things to break down.”
