Dua Lipa Advises Herself on How To Move Past an Ex in “New Rules”

In 2015, Dua Lipa debuted with the stomping and synthy single “New Love”. Two years later, she released “New Rules”, an electropop smash that documents why many feel anxious about falling in love. The song finds the singer unable to get over an old flame. So she creates a kind of operating manual for how to survive the returning ex.

Over a tropical groove, Lipa describes a pattern of behavior. Though she sees his actions clearly, can she avoid the repeated heartbreaks?

Out of My Mind

Depending on how a relationship ends, getting over an ex isn’t always so easy. We all wish to be wanted, needed, valued. But those feelings create vulnerabilities others can exploit.

Here, Lipa must jot down the reality of her ex’s behaviors—brand new laws of love for moving forward.

Talking in my sleep at night, making myself crazy,
Out of my mind, out of my mind.
Wrote it down and read it out, hoping it would save me,
Too many times, too many times.
My love, he makes me feel like nobody else, nobody else,
But my love, he doesn’t love me, so I tell myself, I tell myself.

Still, taking advice is harder than giving it. So Lipa submits a three-step method to protect herself from going back to her lover. Each step also wisely includes a consequence.

One: Don’t pick up the phone,
You know he’s only calling ’cause he’s drunk and alone.
Two: Don’t let him in,
You’ll have to kick him out again.
Three: Don’t be his friend,
You know you’re gonna wake up in his bed in the morning.
And if you’re under him, you ain’t getting over him,
I got new rules, I count ’em.

I Never Learn

There’s comfort in returning to what we know. She notices the pattern, yet falls for it anyway. Better write it down. Put it in an earworm hook. A pop hit as a useful mnemonic: “New Rules”.

I keep pushing forwards, but he keeps pulling me backwards,
Nowhere to turn, no way, nowhere to turn, no.
Now I’m standing back from it, I finally see the pattern,
I never learn.

Photo by Dave Simpson/Getty Images