Leisure as a Dream Job
The Dua Effect
Last year, I wrote about what The New York Times dubs “pop’s middle class”: talented pop artists who have accrued loyal followings but failed to effectively ascend to - or remain within - mainstream pop royalty. In August 2023, writer Shaad D’Souza cited Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Troye Sivan, Kim Petras, Ava Max, and others as residing in this transitory grade. In August 2025, following their colossal festival turnouts and chart endurance, I’d argue that Charli and Sabrina have climbed to the next mainstream rung and are likely to remain there if they can retain their stickiness and steadfast devotees.
However, one particular artist that I struggle to place on this gradation is Dua Lipa. When her self-titled debut album came out in 2017, my peers and I were all ears. “New Rules” was a perfect, girl-empowered lead single for that period - the kind of song I’d sing with my friends on the way to a high school football game, counting out the “rules” on our hands and envisioning fake ex-boyfriends as we belted out the lyrics.
Dua doubled down on the momentum with the release of her second album, Future Nostalgia, in March 2020. All of it felt like kismet: the tracks were electric and highly danceable, but were released during a time of global pain and uncertainty. There was a contrast between the tone of popular music at that time and the tone of the world (one might call the music of this period “pandemic pop,” modeled after “recession pop” of the late 2000s). The sounds of Future Nostalgia crystallized the rough patch like a fossil. I can’t listen to “Don’t Start Now” without remembering the TikTok dance that my sisters and I learned in my bedroom, uncertain if we would ever go outside again. I doubt this image is what Dua and her team imagined when they titled the record Future Nostalgia, but it was aptly named indeed. The album earned her a Grammy win and several chart-topping hits.
In 2025, the world has emerged from a global pandemic, but Dua’s music momentum feels as though it’s strangely slowed. In 2024, she teamed up with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker for her third studio album, Radical Optimism, which failed to acquire the same commercial accolades and cult devotion that Future Nostalgia did. When the album was absent from Grammy nominations, few feathers were ruffled.
I’m tempted to suggest that Dua Lipa’s mainstream pop crown has slipped, but that would be a mischaracterization as well. Despite Radical Optimism’s failure to launch, Dua remains a coveted pop culture figure in other domains, and for a long time, I struggled to understand why. Relative to other pop artists, Dua’s public persona lacks grit or stick, like freshly washed hair that can’t hold a curl properly. She’s very beautiful and a talented performer. But passable vocals and dance abilities alone can’t hold the center - not when triple-threat performers like Beyoncé and Gaga remain at the top of their game, and not when newcomers like Sabrina and Chappell are debuting one-thousand-watt personalities, earning Halloween costume stamps within their first year in the spotlight.
For a long time, the only internet meme surrounding Dua was the joke that she’s always on vacation, as her Instagram grid is perpetually dotted with photos of her and her glamorous friends in new tropical locales. Beyond churning out radio bops and seeming like a good hang, there didn’t seem to be anything else there. But over the past couple of years, something happened to affect the Dua Lipa Brand - arguably the most important event that can happen in a person’s life: starting a newsletter.
Service95, Dua’s recommendation and culture newsletter, launched its first issue in February 2022. Described as a “cultural concierge,” the weekly letter features a curation of stories covering culture, activism, travel, and an exclusive note from the pop star herself. The stories are all mostly written by freelance contributors and cast a wide net of topics, featuring recommendations on what to do with seventy-two hours in Mykonos, a story on the resilient nightlife scene in Kyiv, and information on how to support people in Gaza amid ongoing aid blockage.
But Service95 first came to my attention upon the launch of its book club in 2023. Each month, the newsletter spotlights a new book and features an author reading and interview with Dua on the brand’s YouTube channel. Like the newsletter contents, the book selection is quite vast - and tasteful. Many of the books are debut novels from emerging authors, such as Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain or Tomasz Jedrowski’s Swimming in the Dark. The September 2025 book club pick is Percival Everett’s The Trees, a work of historical fiction that directly addresses racial violence in the United States. In addition to the author interview, Service95 also shared an accompanying essay by Brendon Holder about the legacy of activism that sprang out of Emmett Till’s murder.
When beautiful young women and heavy reading intersect on the internet, accusations of “performance” are destined to be flung around. But that hasn’t been the case for the Service95 Book Club. After reading The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, the February Book Club pick, I watched Dua’s interview with the author and was instantly charmed. She is a generous listener, a warm conversationalist, and seems to genuinely read the books. It’s easy to sniff out when Didion and Nietzsche are being used as Instagram props, and that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
What intrigues me most about Service95 is that it doesn’t appear to be making much money - the newsletter is free to subscribers and there are little to no sponsored posts. Dua promotes the brand while touring internationally (she sold out two nights at Wembley Stadium this year), and is also somehow in a perpetual state of vacation with actor fiancé, Callum Turner - a pair engineered for Pinterest.
The Dua Lipa Brand isn’t necessarily about technical performance prowess. She isn’t purely a student of pop vocals or dancing or acting, and doesn’t seem to care to be wholly any of those things. The brand is about abundance - about being a student in life. Dua is the final realization of a European pop star - embodying truly equal parts work and play, eshewing contemporary it girl capitalist side ventures (i.e., a shoddily-made skincare/makeup brand) in favor of promoting cultural and literary fluency, not likely for any large monetary profit. It’s all very cool.
Dua Lipa’s endurance as not necessarily a pop singer, but a pop emblem, reminds me of the resurgence of Anthony Bourdain in mainstream zillennial culture. Whether it’s an image of him smoking a cigarette at a Parisian bistro, slurping noodles on the streets of Hanoi, or diving into the turquoise Med, Bourdain has become a similar symbol of informed, pleasure-forward living. A couple of years ago, Kitchen Confidential made its rounds on the it girl/it boy reading circuit. Screenshots and quotes from No Reservations often find themselves on Euro Summer mood boards. While Bourdain was an accomplished executive chef in New York City, his legacy endures through his advocacy for travel and seeking good food in unknown places.
Romanticizing travel, good food, and good books is nothing new. But there’s something poignant about how these particular individuals - and their personal brands - are speaking to today’s young people.
It’s funny. Whenever I ask my friends what they would do if they won the lottery (after they “solve” world hunger, reverse the effects of climate change, and buy their parents mansions, of course), most say that they’d do what they actually want to do with their lives. They’d open up a restaurant, or learn an instrument, or get an MFA. They’d travel the world and write a book about it. They’d learn how to make films or how to sew their own clothes or how to speak a new language. They’d do all the things that their nine-to-five seemingly prevents them from doing, stoking their kindling passions. They could finally afford curiosity - or the time and mental space that allows curiosity to be ushered forward.
Of course, who’s to say what they would actually do? The temptation to sit beachside for weeks on end - book and phone in hand - would also loom. All that’s to say, the young people that I know dream of leisure. But not entirely passive leisure. They desire enrichment and less alienation from their day-to-day tasks. It’s not that they “don’t dream of labor,” as many internet anti-capitalists like to quip. They dream of laboring on their own terms, hence why the creator economy beckons like a siren’s song.
It’s a desire that feels as tragic as it feels fanciful. When left to our own devices, and unlimited resources, we all want to do whatever we want - where is the altruism? One has to assume that when we all have what we need - and want, within reason - we then have the capacity to lift our gaze upward and outward. When we don’t fear losing security - and thus, losing face - perhaps we won’t grip onto it all so tightly. When wealth doesn’t so directly equate power, we don’t embark on so mad a dash to acquire it.
Does desiring leisure mean forfeiting excellence? Returning to our case study, pop music is akin to Dua Lipa’s day job, with Service95 and personal leisure existing on the coveted periphery. When your attention is so split, and “vacation” takes up a decent chunk of the brand’s pie chart, can you ever hope to be one of “the greats”?
Answering that question requires a redefinition of “great.” What does it mean to live a great life? To leave a great mark? I sense this redefinition - this shuffling of priorities - among my contemporaries. I’d venture to guess that most I know would make the sacrifice; give up a legacy for an easier life. Many of us can only dream within the bounds of what we think is possible, and less material wealth dampens those prospects. Dreaming amid a skewed distribution of affluence and an abysmal job market means dreaming of getting exactly what you need, such that you have time to catch your breath.
If we’re to grow - if we’re to expand beyond the current definition - we’ll have to lift the gaze of our dreams in real time. A world without friction doesn’t exist. But maybe there’s a world we can inch towards - and build - that aspires to a more productive kind of friction. It’s a world that centers community over the individual, the human spirit over productivity. A world in which we don’t feel the urge to wring profit out of every facet of our lives - a world in which we don’t have to. Where there’s a slice of ourselves left at the end of the day. Where there can even be a periphery. Where we can get what we need and what we want in equal measure, a life where we can be great and be happy.
might have to stan dua lipa after reading this
oh, this was a delicious read. I thought I hadn't considered this topic previously, but upon reflection, I think you've articulated something I've been musing on that was under-baked in my own brain. there's such a pressure to be "the best" in western culture, that striving for ultimate and definite success is the only thing that will fulfill us, but rarely do we consider at what level of success we might actually be our most content, at what point our lives will be our most well-rounded and most LIVED. using dua lipa as a lens to reflect this perspective was something I enjoyed, and frankly, needed!