Dua Lipa - Telling It Like It Is (2017)

Dua Lipa was born on 22 August 1995 in London, the eldest child of Kosovo Albanian parents Anesa (née Rexha) and Dukagjin Lipa. She was musically influenced by her father, who was the lead singer and guitarist of the Kosovan rock band Oda, and he continued to play music at home, including his own compositions and songs of artists such as David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Radiohead and The Police. It's no surprise then that Lipa began singing at the young age of five. She attended Fitzjohn's Primary School, and her music lessons there included the cello, but when she auditioned to enter the school choir, the teacher told her that she couldn't sing, so at the age of nine she began weekend singing lessons. In 2008 her family moved to Pristina after Kosovo declared independence, moving back to London in 2015 to finish her schooling. She starting writing her own songs, which she uploaded to SoundCloud and YouTube, along with videos of her covering tracks such as 'If I Ain't Got You' by Alicia Keys and 'Beautiful' by Christina Aguilera. She also modelled for Topshop and signed with a modelling agency, which helped her land a role as a "singer" in an ITV advertisement for The X Factor in 2013, covering the song 'Lost In Music'. In 2013 she signed a contract with Tap Management, directed by Ben Mawson and Ed Millett, who offered her a monthly salary to leave her job as a cocktail waitress and focus on recording music. During one of the sessions she co-wrote the song 'Hotter Than Hell', which led to her signing a record deal with Warner Bros. Records in 2014. In August 2015 she released her first single, 'New Love', followed by 'Be The One' in October, which reached number one in Belgium, Poland and Slovakia, as well as charting in the top ten in over eleven European territories. 

She toured the UK from January to early December 2016, during time which she released her third single, 'Last Dance', in February, followed by 'Hotter Than Hell' in May, which peaked at number 15 on the UK Singles Chart. Her fifth single 'Blow Your Mind (Mwah)', was released in August, and not only broke the UK Top 30, but was also her first entry on the US Billboard Hot 100, debuting at number 72. In May 2017, she performed at the anniversary of Indonesian television channel SCTV and won the award for Young and Promising International Artist at the SCTV Music Awards, and to build on this success she released her debut self-titled album in June 2017. The new single ,'New Rules', was released the following month, and it was her first number one in the UK. In June she performed at the Glastonbury Festival, and in July she performed at the We The Fest, an Indonesian music festival in Jakarta. In December, she was named the most streamed woman of 2017 in the UK by Spotify, and in January 2018, she received nominations in five categories at the Brit Awards, more nominations than any other artist that year. Between signing with Warner Bros. Records in 2014 and the release of her first album three years later, Lipa had been constantly writing and recording new songs, so that by the time she was ready to choose a dozen of them for her first album, she had around 60 to pick from, and so rather than waste those rejected tracks, I'll be posting four albums of out-takes and demos recorded between 2014 and 2017. 

Track listing

01 One For The Night
02 Between A Bullet And A Heartbreak
03 High, Wild And Free
04 New York (Mend My Broken Heart)
05 Chasing The Dragon
06 Looking For Trouble
07 Telling It Like It Is
08 Follow Me
09 Talk Myself (Out Of It)
10 Kinda Like That
11 Voodoo
12 Under The Lights
13 Yours