The Pop Corporation

Rita Ora’s life seems exhausting, honestly. Like treading water, she has to keep the grind up possibly more than a lot of her peers, from which you can draw your own conclusions. Her work ethic is very strong, that much is clear, as she scrambles over the bones of pop and celebrity culture. Does anyone like her the best? Is her house bigger than all of ours put together? These are the questions absolutely no-one is asking apart from maybe someone who works for Capital Radio, or tabloid magz and ragz.

She’ll have a new single out soon and it’s called ‘You Only Love Me’ and while we haven’t listened to it, we’re guessing she’s in the earnest section of her career. She’s like in her 30s now, right? She’ll be reflecting on her life, thinking about the state of the world, her marriage, what she’s learned in all these years and after covering Kate Bush, she’ll be thinking of herself more like she’s an artiste, rather than a simple performer.

She appeared on social media with her partner Taika Waititi (a very satisfying name to say out loud), PDAing it up and said ‘I’M BACK!’ and then gave the date for her single. Ish. You’re not arsed are you? You’ll hear it in a taxi at some point and be like ‘that’s okay, I suppose’.

Apparently, she’s been spending time in Albania which is where she’s from, and has promised fans can expect plenty of new projects as she looks to prove that it’s possible to “do more than one thing”. Not that anyone really thought people couldn’t do more than one thing, but she’s in her 30s now – she’s in the earnest bit of her career isn’t she? It’s all small roles in films, cook books, activewear lines and podcasts isn’t it?

She said, at some point: “A new album – January next year. It’s going to be great. More music and a film. My dream is to show everybody that you can do more than one thing. You can be a musician, actor, dancer, mother, aunt all at the same time. I want to try and do everything.”

Anyway, we’re a music blog, so let’s cut to the chase and regurgitate what she said about that: “I wanted to make this a very raw, musical record. Maybe get a few bottles of whatever you drink when you listen to this album.”

Full marks to anyone who thought of something funny just now, like arsenic or 48 litres of Vimto, or whatever. Not that Rita Ora is necessarily that bad or anything – it’s just, y’know, making jokes in your head regardless of the situation. Anyway, Rita Ora – apparently, she’s struggled with the ‘really intense’ pressure of being in the spotlight, which is something of a humble brag for a singer that sang… well… can’t quite summon any at the moment, but she’s definitely done some singing and it looks like she had a threesome with her husband and an actress who also escapes us at the minute.

She explained: “I’ve felt like quitting. I was like, ‘Is this worth it? What am I doing?’ As I got more famous, I understood that people look up to you.”

“You become a role model and sometimes you are not ready for that because you only wanted to make music. Now you are being followed by millions of people. So psychologically it is really intense.

“You have to stay true to your friends who you have known for years.”

Earnest. Podcast. Leggings. Painting. Cook book. Small role in a movie. Mid-tier album. Hardback biography half price at Asda. It’s all going exactly to plan and Pop Corps wishes her luck after she froze her eggs (you don’t care to check to see if we’ve made that up) and was strongly rumoured to be the subject of some very scurrilous rumours regarding Beyonce’s husband (oh, you’re off to do the deep dives on that aren’t you? Bye then).