Meet your new favourite popstar Dua Lipa - just don't call her the new Lana Del Rey

2016's new port of call for 'f**k you' anthems.

When you share a manager with Lana del Rey, the comparisons come thick and fast. But seconds into hearing Dua Lipa's unique brand of dream-pop, it becomes clear that a) the two singers are markedly different and b) she's rightly one of 2016's most hotly tipped stars.

"It's a great time to not be ashamed of being a popstar," says the 20-year-old Brit, whose Kosovan parents took her back to the once-troubled state the year it declared independence in 2008. Two years later Dua returned to London to throw herself into music. 

Here's what you need to know about your new favourite popstar…

1. The Lana Del Rey comparisons confuse the hell out of her.

"We're so different. It isn't a bad thing - I think she's great. I think the only reason we get compared is because we have the same manager. And when I dropped my first song it was produced by [Lana Del Rey producer] Emile Haynie so it was like, 'Oop! New Lana!' 

"Once I dropped 'Be The One', I feel like people actually understood that it's very, very different. All the songs that are to come are very different to Lana. I'm not mad at the comparison. It's good people will get to see different things that are to come and hopefully form a different opinion."

2. Nelly Furtado and Pink were real influences.

"I like the realness. I like everything they sang about, it wasn't sugar-coated. Everything was real and what was actually going on in their lives and how they felt. My first album was Woah Nelly - I'm obsessed."

3. Her upcoming song 'Hotter Than Hell' is basically a big f**k you.

"I was in a relationship that really f**ked me over. In the song, I twisted it so that I was in the better position and I was the one going f**k you. That really helped me get over it. It was very therapeutic for me."

4. Her parents shaved off all her hair when she was six. ​

"I had really weird, super-fine hair. They were like, 'If we shave her hair off, better hair's gonna come out'. It worked! I was rocking a bald head for a while. People were like, 'Oh! What's this?', and my mum told me to say I look like Demi Moore. She was doing that role in a film [G.I. Jane]."

5. Theatre school is as clichéd as you imagine.

"I went to academic school during the week, then at weekends I went to theatre school. It was very cliché - kids singing around in halls practising their lines and people just tap dancing in the f**king corridors. But it was great. I made some of my closest friends there. It was really good confidence-wise, especially after the whole choir thing [see 7 below]."