Dua Lipa turned down collaborating with other artists because she wanted to focus on her solo music.

Dua Lipa

Dua Lipa

The 21-year-old singer songwriter has admitted she rejected a number of requests from fellow musicians to collaborate on tracks when she was first starting out, but she decided to turn down "all of them" because she wanted to concentrate on her own records to make sure she gave a "clear idea" of the music she wanted to make to her audience.

Speaking about her career, the brunette beauty said: "I got asked to do quite a few features early on and turned down all of them because I wanted to get my own music out first so people had a clear idea of what I was bringing to the table as an artist."

The 'Scared To Be Lonely' hitmaker has joined forces with a number of musicians throughout her career, including Sean Paul, Miguel, and Martin Garrix, but she believes collaborating can be "scary territory" because you can lose sight of your personal style.

She added: "[Collaborating] is scary territory -- sometimes the songs don't relate to who you as an artist or a person, and people do them for the sake of having a hit. I don't believe in that. So I held out until people knew me and knew my voice."

Dua teamed up with Coldplay's Chris Martin on the song 'Homesick' from her eponymous album, and she has revealed the 40-year-old artist advised her to give herself time to "breathe, space to reflect" and to remind herself why she is involved in the music industry.

She recalled to US of America magazine: "[Chris told me] be kind to herself. The important thing is ... to give myself time to breathe, space to reflect, take a step back and remember why I love doing what I do.

"If you're kind to yourself and look after yourself you're able to project great things onto other people. You can only project kindness and niceness if you're kind and nice.

"It's like Roald Dahl's 'The Twits': they're only ugly because they have ugly thoughts."