Dua Lipa admitted that a viral 'hurtful' joke led her to 'take herself off' social media.
The 'Levitating' singer has opened up on one of the early viral moments in her career and how it negatively affected her.
The 'New Rules' star rose to fame in 2015 after a number of breakout singles such as 'Be the One' and 'Blow Your Mind (Mwah)', shooting her into prominence.
The British-Albanian star has stayed in the spotlight ever since, releasing three studio albums since then and undergoing a lot of public scrutiny as a huge musician.
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There was one moment in Lipa's career, however, that was so brutal that it caused her to leave X (formerly Twitter), and it happened during her 2018 Brit Awards performance, while she performed her hit song 'New Rules'.
During an interview with The Guardian, she opened up about the 'humiliating' and 'hurtful' moment, where she carried out a dance move that was later dubbed as the 'pencil sharpener'.
The 28-year-old talked about what she experienced after the performance, saying: “When people took that snippet of me dancing online and just turned it into a meme, and then when I won the best new artist Grammy and people were like, ‘She’s not deserving of it, she’s got no stage presence, she’s not going to stick around,'
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“Those things were hurtful. It was humiliating,” she said.
Acknowledging that performing and writing songs made her 'the happiest', the backlash caused her to feel 'really upset', so she removed herself from X.
“People were picking everything apart that I’d been working on, and I had to learn all that in front of everyone,” the musician continued.
Lipa explained: “In the public eye, I was figuring out who I was as an artist, as a performer.
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“All that was happening while I was 22, 23 years old and still growing up. You have to build tough skin. You have to be resilient.”
She also explained that it was 'a small snippet of a much bigger performance', and claimed that people who would have seen her tour later that year would have more positive things to say about her stage presence.
It took two years for the artist to have finished writing her second studio album, the critically acclaimed 'Future Nostalgia', performing the leading single 'Don't Start Now' at the MTV Europe Music Awards.
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She said: “It was November 2019 when 'Don’t Start Now' came out, and it dawned on me that I’m finally going to get up and dance in front of people after what they have thought about me for so long,
"And I went back, did that performance, and everyone was like, ‘Oh, we were wrong.’ I got a real kick out of that,” she revealed.
The star has since released her third studio album, 'Radical Optimism', earlier this month, though highlighted that she would have worked to improve her performing skills, regardless of any hate.
Obviously, it's not the first time a celebrity has had to deal with critical public opinions, as Kim Kardashian has been dealing with a lot of criticism over her outfit choice at the Met Gala last night (6 May), with its inclusion of a corset.
Featured Image Credit: Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images / Musica TVTopics: Celebrity, Music, Viral, Social Media, Mental Health