Dua Lipa Recalls Getting Rejected from Choir After a Rough Audition: 'Whole School Started Laughing'

The "Training Season" artist opened up about getting challenged to sing a "crazy high note" before learning to focus on her lower vocal range

Dua Lipa went through a "Training Season" of her own before becoming a Grammy-winning singer.

In a new YouTube video with drag performer Trixie Mattel, the British pop star recalled auditioning for a school choir as a young child and getting rejected after a rough audition. Eventually, she learned to focus on her signature lower vocal range.

The topic arose as Mattel, 34, and Lipa, 28, participated in a challenge to paint a replica of the album cover for the "Dance the Night" musician's forthcoming Radical Optimism. After admitting that she's not a very good painter, Lipa recalled playing the cello in grade school.

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"It was like, ‘Pick an instrument,’ so I just picked the biggest instrument. I used to be so small. I only really grew when I was 18, and I don’t know, for some reason I decided to pick the biggest instrument. It just got kind of embarrassing after a while," she said. "I’d walk to school, and it would hit me on the top of the head and then on the back of the feet."

Lipa revealed she'd love to learn to play the "piano or guitar" and periodically tries her hand at the former instrument — before recounting her less-than-stellar first choir audition.

"I was in primary school, and the music teacher was like, ‘Alright, who wants to sing and try out for the choir?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, you know what? I’d actually quite like to do that,’" she detailed. "So I decided to stand up for the whole school, and he started playing on the piano, and it was in this crazy high note, and nothing came out — just air — in that moment, and the whole school started laughing."

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She was then promptly turned away from the choir. "He was like, ‘You know what? Better luck next time.’ And that was it," recalled Lipa, who found her path to singing in the future. "Later on, I was part of the choir, but I was in the lower vocal range."

In order to work her way to singing for fans all over the world, she "went to singing lessons in a theater school every Saturday in London."

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"It was the teacher there that kind of helped me build up my confidence. He was the scariest teacher. His name was Ray," continued Lipa.

“When I was 9 years old he was like, ‘OK, I want you to get up and sing in front of the whole class.’ And I sang, and he was like, ‘Alright, I’m moving you up to the class with 14 and 15 year olds," said the "New Rules" performer. "I was so nervous, but I went to that class, and he helped me build up my confidence... He celebrated me for my deeper, lower voice."

Lipa's third studio album Radical Optimism is set for a May 3 release.

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