Rita Ora
Apr 25, 2023
Two-and-a-half years ago, something happened that spun Rita Ora’s life on its axis. “You never really know who's gonna come into your life,” Rita Ora says now, looking back on the recent years of romance and self-reflection. It’s a time that’s been pivotal to the making of You & I, her third studio album – and first as an artist in full control of her career.
A multi-pronged talent – known not only for music but for her accomplished career in film (Fifty Shades of Grey, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, the forthcoming Disney film The Descendants: The Rise of Red and Tin Solider) and television (Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight, The Masked Singer UK, The Voice Australia) – Ora has spent a decade becoming a master at her many practices. You & I – releasing July 14th via BMG – is her most diaristic project yet: a record that required a level of introspection that she finally feels comfortable putting into her work, knowing, finally, that she can be the one to control the narrative.
Over her career, she has generated over 10 billion global streams, four UK number one singles, and has held the record for the most Top 10 singles for a British female artist in the history of the UK with a total of 13. Her albums ORA and Phoenix spawned Platinum-certificated singles in the UK, while her US chart credentials are stacked: seven Top 10s on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart; five of them number ones. On stage, she has performed live at the Oscars, at the Papal Basilica of St Paul in the Vatican City for the Canonization of Mother Teresa, and for the then-President of the United States and First Lady, Barack and Michelle Obama.
Not bad for a self-made star; a refugee who fled Kosovo for London during her childhood. Her grandfather was a respected theatre maker and arthouse film director, Besim Sahatçiu, who, she says, was “the person who made me believe I could do music”. He taught her about old Hollywood, introduced her to the work of her namesake (Rita Hayworth), and instilled in her a dogged determination to perform when she grew up.
Living in Notting Hill in her teenage years – the daughter of a nurse and a pub landlord – her love for the arts was nurtured in London too: her parents worked hard to ensure she could attend Sylvia Young Theatre School. She started performing at her dad’s pub while still a teenager, between working shifts in a sneaker store. Now, in what some might call a glory story, she’s gone from refugee immigrant to UNICEF ambassador.
She had signed a deal in the States but did most of the leg work herself – alongside manager Sarah Stennett – to land her breakout hit. The DJ Fresh collaboration “Hot Right Now” was a number one, platinum-selling hit in the UK; “that really changed everything for me,” she says. From it, spawned ORA, her platinum-selling debut album: a bombastic pop record made with the grit of a girl who’d not only lived in London but experienced it fully.
Its follow-up came in 2018: Phoenix, an emancipatory album that impressed critics across genres with hit singles like “Anywhere” and “Let You Love Me”. It leaned into a new chapter of artistic and personal liberation. Rita soon after expanded her focus to the world of film and television, even as music stayed at the forefront of her mind. Between shoots, she was doing sessions in different studios across the globe – in London, Los Angeles, Berlin and New Zealand – sussing out the throughline for the record she truly wanted to make. What’s more, she found a new home for her music, all while retaining control over her masters. In 2022, she signed to BMG.
On the new album, Rita has a co-writing credit on every track. “It's my love story,” she says declaratively. “The story I wrote whilst I was getting married. I just didn't want anyone else to tell it.”
And so, the album is threaded together, conceptually, to signify the different chapters of her relationship. A high-spirited record about what it feels like to fall beautifully, instinctually in love with someone and for the love to be wholly reciprocated. After making music written from the cliff-edge of romantic devastation and having the kind of hedonistic fun we all do, this is Rita from a new angle: feeling safe and happy. Knowing she’s found someone special.
The lead single, “You Only Love Me”, speaks to its earliest chapters: a song about the “lovestruck period of a relationship”, she says; the click of possessive infatuation when you want to mean everything to someone, even when it may be too early to demand it. The endless internal rumination. For the album’s second single, she got the blessing of Fatboy Slim to rework his massive 1998 hit “Praise You” into “Praising You.” The infectious nature of its classic piano riff – that here bursts into surefire EDM summer hit – feels like a delicious metaphor for the entrancing nature of love. It’s a song, Rita says, about “how my emotions take over so much that, for the first time, I'm not putting myself first. [About] not caring what you have to do because you're so in love.”