Songfacts®:

• Dua Lipa was born in London to ethnic Albanian parents from Kosovo who had left Prishtina in the 1990s. Despite being rejected from the school choir as she couldn't hit the high notes, Dua Lipa had aspirations of becoming a singer and at the age of 14 she began posting covers of her favorite songs by artists such as Christina Aguilera and Nelly Furtado on YouTube. Her breakthrough came when she signed with the management company that guided Lana Del Rey to fame. In August 2015 Lipa released her first single "New Love," which was helmed by Lana Del Rey producer Emile Haynie.
• This dramatic, full-throated banger finds Lipa telling a boy who hurt her to go to hell. She explained to Digital Spy: "I was in a relationship that really f--ked me over. In the song, I twisted it so that I was in the better position and I was the one going f--k you. That really helped me get over it. It was very therapeutic for me."
• The toxic romance that inspired this track left Lipa questioning her self-worth. "I never want to portray weakness in my songs," she told Billboard magazine. "Even though sometimes sadness and vulnerability are really strong, I wanted to seem like I had the upper hand in the relationship. It was really therapeutic."
• Speaking to Rolling Stone, Dua Lipa recalled how she was struggling to complete this track during a writing session with the London-based electronic act RITUAL.
  
  "I was going through a tough breakup," she said. "Someone who made me feel like I wasn't good enough. But when I wrote this song, I wanted it to seem like he couldn't get enough of me. The song was good, but the chorus wasn't quite there. We were like, 'Let's scrap it.'"
  
  "And I was scrolling through Tumblr, and I see the words "Hotter than Hell" in red on a black background," Lipa continued. "And I go, "That's cool! What if he thought I was hotter than hell, and I just didn't want him?"