Dua Lipa has described her song Illusion as the "eureka moment" that helped unlock her new album Radical Optimism.
The New Rules singer and her collaborators were experimenting with different sounds and figuring out what they wanted to say with the new album when they finally had their "eureka moment" with Illusion.
"That was a song where I felt like lyrically, I got this radical optimism," she explained to Variety. "I think musically also, when Kevin (Parker) and Danny (L. Harle) came together and it was the live drums and the synths and the big music breakdown, in my head the big dance moment, when all those came together it was just a feeling. I had a feeling and I was like, now I have something to bounce off of."
The 28-year-old pop star added that she felt "very strong" when she wrote the song, which is about seeing past someone's lies.
"(It's about) understanding it for what it is and just entertaining it for the hell of it, even though you see what's happening," she shared. "But I felt in a stronger power of position, because I was like maybe before, I would have fallen for something like this and now I can dance with the illusion, and it's something for me too, you know?"
Off the back of Illusion, Dua and her team wrote Happy For You, a really "vulnerable and open and honest" song about what was going on in her life at the time.
Reflecting on the process, she added, "I feel overall, in this whole record, I just grew as I was writing. I feel like I matured throughout."
Radical Optimism will be released on 3 May.
