Let’s talk about “New Rules.” Did that come out of later sessions?

That came out of later sessions, and it was also the last, final push where I did my last two trips to L.A. and I got “I Don’t Give a Fuck” [her single “IDGAF”], I did “Lost in Your Light,” and I did “Homesick” and “Begging.” It was really those last few trips that really kind of solidified and closed the album for me, which I was really grateful for.

I’d been postponing the album. I wanted lots of new songs on there. I didn’t just want to fill it with “The Very Best Of!” So it gave me the opportunity to add lots of new songs. It’s also the reason I got the tattoo “Patience” on my hand: So I can remember.

But yeah, “New Rules”…it’s crazy, really, what that song’s done, because…I couldn’t have made this shit up.

Dua, all the gays saw this one coming.

[laughs] Really? But I think it was the video, you know? The album came out, and it definitely streamed really well, but I always knew it was going to be the single. I just didn’t expect it to do this. But I don’t think anybody really expects a song to go as crazy as it does when they first release it, unless they’re a psychic.

The last time you and I chatted, you said something interesting about songwriting. What you told me then—and you may have a different perspective on it now—is that you preferred the songs of yours that you’d had a hand in writing. And with “New Rules,” you didn’t.

I did not.

But that song feels imbued with your DNA. It feels like yours. Has your perspective changed on songwriting?

I think it’s definitely changed. I still take a lot of pride in being able to write my own songs. My story’s coming from me. But “New Rules” is a song that I felt like I had been in the room and written. I’m so close with Emily [Warren] and Caroline [Ailin] and Ian [Kirkpatrick], who had worked on it, that I feel like it was a song they had written with me in mind. I’m proud of it as if I had been in that room. I just feel so closely to it. I guess I don’t have that perspective anymore. But like I said, I still love writing everything. And I’m still going to do it. But it’s a song that I feel like I can relate to on a personal level, that I also feel that when I do perform it, it becomes mine and I embody it in a different way.

How did that song get to you in the first place?

The song actually was really Emily and Caroline and Ian, who had worked together. And I was in the studio with Ian, and we sat down and he was like, “Me, Emily, and Caroline have written a song, but we’re not playing it to anyone. We’re only playing it to you.” And I was like, “Okay.” And I heard it and I was like, “Hold the phone. I am so glad you played it to me. I am obsessed.”

When did you realize, when you put the video out, what it was gonna do?

It was really quick, because none of my videos had ever done anything like that. So many cool female artists were reaching out. Lorde said it was one of her favorite videos she’d seen, and Zara Larsson was reaching out. The message of the video is “Girls supporting each other,” so it meant so much to me when other female artists truly had my back. I think it all just happened so fast. I didn’t expect it. But I still didn’t expect it to go to number one in the U.K. I didn’t!