Leigh-Anne did not mince her words in her Music Week cover interview.
Out this month, our February edition stars the Little Mix star and her team at Tap Music and Virgin Music Group, as they dive into the campaign for her first solo album, My Ego Told Me To.
Due out on February 20 via her own Made In The 90s Ltd label, it marks a watershed moment for the singer.
“I’ve been killing off a version of myself that was no longer serving me in this industry,” Leigh-Anne told us. “I wanted to bring forth an alter ego, this other side of me who brings the fire. She’s the one who won’t take no for an answer, who is firm and knows exactly what she wants and doesn’t take any BS. I can see her in my younger self, so I wanted to bring her forward again.”
“I’m a very emotional person, I can be quite vulnerable,” the singer explained. “Going solo is a massive deal, and I didn’t feel that version of me was helping me tackle it. I was dealing with the industry and with leaving the group. I needed the energy, the fire, of an alter ego. She is my protection in some ways. I also thought it would be a cool creative choice for the album.”
Leigh-Anne said the idea of an alter ego also fed into her decision to go independent.
“It was definitely the alter ego who came in and was like, ‘Right, I’m going, bye!’” she said. “I probably underestimated how hard it is to be independent, but at the same time, in this day and age, I think being independent is quite a flex, right? We’re in a place in music where no one really knows what the formula is any more; the people decide. So it’s the best time to be independent. And it means I can have fun, without someone breathing down my neck.”
She identified funding as the biggest difference.
“You don’t have a bank throwing money at you, you are your own bank,” she said. “I’m funding most things myself, but at the same time, I think labels are [spending less] now and that’s across the board. I’ve heard from other artists that even when you’re doing well, they’re very stingy.”
Leigh-Anne reflected proudly on her achievements with Little Mix.
“Everyone’s doing their thing and it feels very authentic to them, I’m so proud,” she said of the band’s solo endeavours. |All our albums are so different – it’s wild – and that’s exactly how it should be, because we are so different. What made Little Mix ‘Little Mix’ was that we were all very unique, and when you put that together it created this amazing band. I think the fact that we’re all following our thing is great.”
Leigh-Anne said she “wouldn’t trade the experience for the world” but was also keen to explore who she was as a solo act, “because being in a group, you’re only ever really one quarter of something”.
She told Music Week that she “struggled with my identity a lot,” and “really wanted to show who I was, to show my culture”.
“In the first video [for Little Mix single Wings] I had my Jamaican colours on. I was always experimental with my hair, wore different braid styles, and really embraced my Blackness,” she explained. “But I struggled with my identity, in a sense, because I didn’t know what part to play in the group.”
Leigh-Anne also discussed the feeling that, as a Black woman, the group’s “predominantly white fanbase” weren’t relating to her because of “unconscious bias, and the more I thought about it, the more I would go into my shell”.
She made a 2021 documentary with director Natasha Gaunt titled Leigh-Anne: Race, Pop & Power, later launching The Black Fund with her partner, footballer Andre Gray, aimed at providing financial support to Caribbean and African groups in the UK.
“[Doing the film] meant that I finally said the words, said that race was part of the reason I felt I was fading into the background,” she explained. “And when it came out I had different girlband members reaching out to me saying, ‘I feel you, I feel you!’ and I thought, ‘Okay, so I’m not crazy.’”
Leigh-Anne said the fact that she was “really trying to carve something for myself within the group,” led to the realisation that “it was important for me to do this album my way.”
“I could have taken another route – one that is more pop, more Little Mix, more what people know me for – and perhaps that would be easier, but I don’t know,” she continued. “I wouldn’t be being true to myself and authentic. I get this one chance to do something for myself and make the music that I really fucking love, and I’m doing it.”
Leigh-Anne offered up her feelings on the state of the industry, too.
“To be in the public eye and to have the pressure of that, with so many eyes on you, so many opinions, so many comments, both positive and negative, and then when you add the crazy schedules and the no sleep…” the singer said. “It’s such an intense thing.”
“I don’t think it should be something anyone takes lightly,” she continued. “To be an artist in this industry is bloody intense. There needs to be things in place to protect people’s mental health and to actually care for it. Maybe it’s about employing people that actually give a shit about humans? That can be as simple as asking someone how they are feeling today.”
Read the full interview, which features Leigh-Anne’s sister and manager Sairah Pinnock, Tap Music’s Ed Millett and Virgin Music Group’s Vanessa Bosåen, in the new issue of Music Week. Subscribers can read it online here.
