In today’s episode of ‘How It Went Down,’ 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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00:00Hey, this is Dua Lipa and this is how it went down with my song Illusion for Billboard.
00:15Songwriting process, it always starts with a yap, how we like to call it, with Caroline.
00:22I was in a studio in London where I spent pretty much most of my year and a half
00:26writing for this record. Every morning I would go in and I'd have a cup of tea and I would sit
00:32with Caroline and we'd basically like, it's a sofa and there's a little table and we would sit
00:36on the floor in between the sofa and the table and just start talking about everything that
00:39was happening. I was in I guess the milkshake of singledom. It's just like this crazy rollercoaster
00:48of just funny stories and I think it just makes for really good writing and so I'd go in and I'd
00:55sit with Caroline who I've been working with since my first album. I mean we're so close so
00:59I can tell her anything and we were sitting down and talking. It's funny when someone thinks that
01:04they can trick you or they can be an illusion of some sort and you see right through it but you
01:11choose to like play along because it's just more funny but you, you know, all the way through I
01:16guess it's just part of the dating thing where you're kind of just texting at this point because
01:21you're bored but you could just see right through the bullshit and so that's really what illusion
01:27is about. There's a moment in this song it's like, you know, I can dance all night to this.
01:32There's nothing that stops me from being able to see through this illusion like I can play
01:37you at your own game kind of thing and so that's where it, that's where it came from.
01:42For me in this music video as a whole what I wanted was bodies and people creating different
01:49scenes or just movements that look like an illusion. That people are going to watch this
01:55video and not believe that we actually did all these things in real life. I was really inspired
01:59by the Catalan towers which is like these big towers of, of people, you know, in the
02:06Catalan towers which is like these big towers of, of people climbing on top of each other and it's
02:13like a big festival that happens in, in Spain but it's so visually beautiful to see that I just
02:19wanted this kind of idea of illusion in a very like literal sense to, to come across and it's,
02:28it's all very beautiful and you see the skyline of Barcelona and there's all kinds of divers and
02:34acrobats and towers and tricks that we do all the way through. It was just so much fun, it's just
02:43very visually beautiful and I think looks can be deceiving, you know, as the song Illusion translates.
02:58To be honest it's always fucking freezing for some reason on set even when it's hot
03:04you're gonna be cold and like there's always like in between takes, it's lots of jackets,
03:09tees, uggs, like not glamorous in the slightest, getting really close to a heater, you know, having
03:14to change under towels because you have to get quickly ready for the next shot, go, go, go, washing
03:20my hair in the sink because I was in the swimming pool and I had to get ready for the next shot. It
03:26is hectic and it's two hours of a lot of crazy energy but it's worth it. It's all about the
03:34madness and the chaos but yeah, it's, yeah, it's a, it's a non-stop shot.