The 'Break My Heart' hitmaker - who has previously opened up on limiting her social media use - recently admitted she wouldn't have been able to make her second album, 'Future Nostalgia', without having taking a break from online platforms, and now she has admitted she needed to block out the "opinion" of her fans who adored the 2017 mega-hit so much to create something different which she can be "proud of".

Speaking to the new issue of GQ magazine - of which she is the cover star - Dua explained: “I needed to create an album that I was really proud of, without the opinion of other people.

“If I stayed online and tried to follow the guidelines of stan culture, I’d probably be trying to remake ‘New Rules’ over and over again.”

The 24-year-old pop star - who is dating model Anwar Hadid - used to get really "upset" when people turned on her on social media once she started to have success.
]
She shared recently: "In all honesty, I don't think I could have done my second record if I hadn't taken a step back from social media.

"When you first start, when I first started putting new music out, everything was super positive and I had lots of nice messages.

"I think the more stuff you do, then there is criticism and comments and it all comes in thick and fast, and for a while it was really getting to me.

"I just felt like people had nothing but mean things to say or I was being picked on.

"It did upset me, it made me feel I didn't deserve to do certain things."

Read the full feature with Dua in the June issue of GQ available via digital download and on newsstands on Thursday May 7.