Dua Lipa has tried to make literature sexy – and it's working
Dua Lipa is many things. A pop star with seven Brit Awards and three Grammys; an actress in blockbusters like Barbie; a fashion designer who launched a range with Donatella Versace.
To which she can justifiably add: one of Britain's foremost literary tastemakers.
Her social media feeds are chock-full of pictures of Lipa posing with high-brow books, she has given a speech at the Booker Prize ceremony and, for the past two years, Lipa has run the Service95 Book Club, which sees her pick a new tome each month and interview its author. Guests have included the likes of Booker-winner Douglas Stuart (recorded live at the Hay Festival, no less), the legendary Patti Smith and Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing. Spotify has just snapped up Lipa's podcast, a big bet that her literary credentials are only going to grow.
'For me, one of the best things about reading is getting to chat with my friends about the book that's just blown my mind,' Lipa said when announcing the Spotify deal. 'But surely the ultimate fantasy would be to have the author in the room there with us, answering all our questions about the incredible world they've created. Well, I get to live out my fantasy with the Service95 Book Club podcast… as someone who really is obsessed with books, it's a dream come true.'
For an author to have their work endorsed by Lipa is the real dream come true, and it is hard to overstate how much of a boost publishers get if she recommends their book to her huge fanbase. For instance, in 2020, Lipa posed in a bikini with a copy of A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara's graphic tale of sexual abuse and self-harm that had originally been published in 2015.
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For the next month, sales were four times as high as usual. 'Most of the time in publishing, you can't really see the impact of things… there's a whole bunch of different things happening. But when it's late in a book's life you can actually see the impact of one thing,' says Ravi Mirchandani, who published A Little Life in the UK when he ran Picador. 'It was a five-year-old book that was selling very, very strongly, [and] the sales bump was entirely attributable to Dua Lipa. There was no ambiguity about it.'
The publishing industry – especially the literary end – will take all the help it can get, with bestseller lists dominated by celebrity authors like Richard Osman or the romantasy titles that are popular with Gen Z on TikTok. Mirchandani adds: 'Precisely because Dua Lipa's constituency is young and not particularly book-focused – because they come to her for her music – even if it's a relatively small percentage of her very enormous fanbase who go out and buy the books, that makes an awful lot of difference to the relatively small business that is books.'
Gaby Wood, the chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, approached Lipa when she saw that she was posting about the books she enjoyed reading online and noticed that she had 'really good taste'. Wood invited Lipa to give a speech at the Booker Prize ceremony in October 2022, a decision that, she admits, triggered a 'slight sceptical eyebrow raise' from some in the industry.
Lipa took the invitation so seriously that she read all seven of the shortlisted titles, and what she said on stage did much to banish any scepticism. 'Touring commitments take me all over the globe and life is often hectic,' she told the great and the good of the publishing world at London's Roundhouse. 'Sometimes, just to survive, I need to adopt a tough exterior. And at these times, it is books that soften me.'
She enthused about interviewing authors on her podcast ('They make incredible guests because they are so in tune with human emotion: it's honestly better than any therapy session I've ever been to!') and how important literature is to her ('Good writing has the power to make people feel seen and heard, to tell stories that the world has ignored. We all just want to love and be loved and find our place in the world, and authors really help us to do that.') Wood says: 'As soon as she stood up and gave that speech she convinced [the doubters].'
A cynic might suggest that Lipa is using her professed love of books to boost her personal brand. And there is a strain of earnestness in her literary likes: she recently revealed in a Vogue interview that she got together with her now-fiancé, Master of the Air actor Callum Turner, after she realised 'we both just happened to be reading the same book' (Hernan Diaz's Trust, which was later featured in the book club).
As a listener, it can feel jarring when, for instance, the singer of One Kiss asks Keefe about Gerry Adams and 'his journey from alleged cold-blooded terrorist to smiling peacemaker', or how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's characters 'intentionally mirror loss of hope in a newly-independent Nigeria'. But her interviewing technique works, and Lipa has an uncanny ability to get under the skin of her guests.
The book world, which is not always the most welcoming to interlopers, especially famous ones, has embraced Lipa with open arms. The writer Blake Lefray hailed her as the world's best literary interviewer – one who doesn't ask the obvious questions – in a video that went viral on YouTube this year.
'I've had a great response,' she said in a 2023 interview. 'People say that their kids started reading because I posted about books. Everything is so bite size now, but reading takes you from that. It's cool to encourage younger generations to read, which maybe isn't so instilled in them because of social media. I know reading has been on a decline, but I read everywhere.'
Lipa has often talked about how she has always curated lists – of books, of restaurants, of tourist experiences – that she shares with her friends and family. She turned that into a weekly lifestyle newsletter, Service95, which she launched after the coronavirus pandemic to try and 'find order in the chaos'. In contrast with Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop or Kourtney Kardashian's Poosh, the name is easily explained, as Lipa has said: 'I was born in '95, and I have always seen myself as someone who is of service to my fans and followers.'
'She just loves to inform and draw attention to things she thinks are amazing and you should be aware of,' says a source close to the star.
Unlike other celebrities with book clubs – such as Reese Witherspoon, who often also buys film rights for her selections – Lipa does not appear to be in it for the money. 'It's a labour of love. It's very authentically something that she loves to do,' the source adds. 'She's always talked about books and reading, and does these things and interviews these authors because she genuinely is interested and excited about them and what they've done.'
That is borne out by her other literary-adjacent endeavours, such as visiting the women-only HMP Downview in London with Wood to talk with an inmates' book group. 'She was really wonderful at the prison, with the group of women, very sensitive and very direct and honest,' Wood remembers. 'That was incredibly impressive. And she gave so much of her time to that which she didn't have to do at all.'
Lipa is not what you would call a prolific pop star – she has put out only three studio albums since 2017 – but she is phenomenally successful. She headlined Glastonbury last year and became the first artist in history to have five songs with more than 2 billion streams each, while she is set to play a pair of sold-out homecoming shows at Wembley Stadium this week and has amassed a £115 million fortune, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, making her one of the wealthiest under-30s in the UK.
She is also renowned by those in the industry for having a Stakhanovite work ethic and highly-organised nature, which lets her embark on a gruelling multi-hyphenate career – and read a lot. Lipa revealed last year that she plans everything in her life, including when to shower and watch TV, 'down to the minute'. 'I need to plan things in order for me to be able to do work and take care of me,' she told the American talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel. 'I like to plan things and that way I can feel like I can do it all.' It is a habit she picked up in childhood.
Sources say that Lipa makes all of the selections for her book club, as well as doing all of the research (reading newspaper articles and listening to other podcasts) about her upcoming guests.
Her interviewing style is accomplished. Lipa clearly reads the books she talks about closely and has the ability to quickly build a rapport with someone on the other end of a video call. 'She is beguilingly frank, and that's not true of most high profile people who want to expand into another dimension: they don't really talk about what touches their hearts,' says Wood. 'That is where this comes from. I know that sounds soppy, but that is what makes it effective.'
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Every aspect of the book club appears to be well-thought-out than. Rather than send would-be readers to the high street-killing Amazon to buy her recommendations, Lipa provides links to bricks-and-mortar chains (Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the US) and the indie-friendly bookshop.org website.
Speak to anybody in the literary industry about Lipa and they do not have a bad word to say about her. 'What she's done for books is astonishing,' says Wood. 'She has transformed the landscape of readership because people follow her and respect her; she brings her music audience with her. The literary world really massively respects her, quite rightly… I hear people talking all the time about how good she is and from all corners. That's a remarkably quick rise in this world.'
Mirchandani felt so grateful to Lipa for interviewing two of his novelists – Stuart and Yanagihara – that he went out and bought one of her CDs. 'I thought it was the least I could do to thank her for my rather pleasing bonuses at the end of relevant financial years,' he says.
'One would have to be a phenomenal snob not to be grateful to her. I don't think I know anybody in publishing who's quite that degree of a snob. I think the word 'gratitude' is the main one. The books that she was focusing on were books that did not strike everybody as ones for the mainstream. She's on the side of the angels.'
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