Dua Lipa reveals all of the mockery over a 2018 dancing video took a toll on her mental health

Dua Lipa’s career started taking off in 2017 with the release of her self-titled debut album, but an unflattering spate of memes took a toll on her mental health.

The 25-year-old British pop star went viral in 2018 with a video of her dance performance that was constantly mocked and turned into various memes.

The singer opened up about the viral video in her cover interview for Attitude Magazine, where she admitted that it messed with her mental health. 

‘I experienced a s**t ton (of bullying) at the end of my first record, and it was definitely something that gave me anxiety and made me upset and made me feel like I wasn’t good enough and made me feel like, maybe I’m not meant to be here and on the stage,’ she revealed.

Even after the dance video went viral, the singer won her first Grammy for Best New Artist and Best Dance Recording in 2019, though there were still some who doubted her.

‘Even after the Grammys, some people were like, “Well, she doesn’t deserve it,”‘ she added.

She thought that one video gave her a bad reputation, as others started to question her stage presence.

‘There were so many things, especially when you start out, like a video of me dancing and they’re like, ‘Ah well, she has no stage presence’ – but they’d never been to one of my shows, they’d never seen me perform. 

‘They would take one small snippet and run with it and it would become a whole thing,’ she added, before explaining how it started to affect her.

‘For a short period of time, it messed with my mental health. You know, I’d go on stage and if somebody was filming me, in my head, I wasn’t, like, “Oh, they’re filming me because they want to keep it.” I was like, “They’re going to film it so they can laugh at me or something,”‘ she said.

She did acknowledge, though, that the whole ordeal did ultimately make her stronger.

‘Yeah, it was a tough time, but I’m also so grateful for experience because I became so much stronger. I became so much more confident after that,’ she said.

The singer added, ‘Now I know what I’m good at; I know how to be good at what I do; [and] I know how much work it takes to be good at what I do.’

Lipa released her second album Future Nostalgia in March, which earned widespread acclaim from music critics.

The album managed to top the charts in thirteen countries and reached the top ten in thirty-one countries.