Wings, Move, Black Magic, Shout Out to My Ex, Touch, Power, Strip
Jesy Nelson tried to kill herself while in Little Mix. She couldn’t deal (or dealt incorrectly) with the haters online. In the 2010s, pop stars found enemies online; some thought Jesy was ugly or overweight, and could say it to her through a screen.
When Little Mix won The X Factor in 2011, Leigh-Anne, Jade and Perrie would all wear shorts; Jesy would wear leggings or bottoms. Jesy told the Guardian while promoting her BBC documentary in September 2019, eight years into her stardom as a quarter of the most durable girl band of all time (I think), that when the band won she was in despair.
In 2013 Jesy almost walked out on the band, then almost walked out of the planet. Through it all – arena shows, chart-topping albums, some phenomenal pop music – Jesy was depressed. Leigh-Anne, meanwhile, has spoken of her issues with colorism, how she is ‘too black’ for magazine spreads. Perrie, for her part, broke off an engagement with Zayn from One Direction and has had therapy to deal with panic attacks arising from social anxiety; Jade overcame anorexia as a teenager.
Teenage girls dealing with any one of several issues of adolescence need role models and guides. Many are social media influencers who preach ‘love yourself…and give me some money’. Popstars have acted as big sisters and agony aunts for years. Little Mix, prominent popstars, have played that role this decade.
For that reason they deserve to be celebrated. A list of 2010 tunes must include those by the quartet, who have produced smashes which have hit public consciousness beyond their demographic of under-16s.
Wings, their debut single, is a great concoction about self-empowerment (spot the theme in this section) where a girl should ‘spread your wings’ which were ‘made to fly’. The verses are syncopated and give way to a lovely bridge (‘words don’t mean a thing’) and the song is driven by euphoric handclaps. Heys and yeahs make pleasant appearances and it was a brilliant first single, which reached number 7 in Japan and number 79 on the Hot 100 in the US.
Amid covers of Word Up (for charity) and Cannonball (for some product to coincide with their X Factor win), their original material emerged on DNA, their ‘winners’ album’ of 2012, and 2013’s Salute. The former featured the irresistible Move (number 19 in Japan) whose music echoes its title; it’s impossible to keep still while listening to it, jerky and irrepressible and definitely inspired by the soundtrack to Pitch Perfect.
The first two albums are packed full of great pop songs, immaculately produced, with Simon Cowell overseeing every aspect, since he was the one who put them together in 2011, spotting that there was a gap in the girlband market as well as the boyband one. (More on One Direction another time.)
Camille Purcell, now a recording artist in her own right under the name Kamille, was the secret weapon for Get Weird (2015). Black Magic was an enormous smash when it came out, fizzing like a Cyndi Lauper song about girls wanting to have fun and even alluding to something euphemistic (‘I’ve got the recipe…you belong to me’) while maintaining the gang vocals of Wings and Move. It had the strongest hook of any Little Mix single and deservingly secured them a third number one and number 67 entry in the US (but only number 47 in Japan). Three follow-up singles were also well received, but I am not motivated to include in my 2010 any of Love Me Like You, Secret Love Song – co-written with guest vocalist Jason Derulo – or Hair, where Sean Paul hopped on a remix.
Glory Days (2016) brought more amazing melodies as Syco and their Modest management team (more on them shortly) tried to push them in America. Touch (‘just a touch of your love’) could have been a song by A.N. Other American harmony group or singer but Little Mix took the bajon beat and rode it to number 4 in the UK charts. Far better was the album’s first single, the excellent Shout Out to My Ex, which was once given a dramatic reading on BBC Radio 1 by Bryan ‘Walter White’ Cranston. Another addictive confection, the quick delivery of the lyrics in the bridge, with the throwaway line ‘I’m cool, by the way’, was the fullest realisation of the characters of the band: four fun girls who are constantly opening themselves up to journalists and fans. Their fanbase are so lucky to have them, and they ended the 2010s with a huge arena tour of the UK.
Better still was Power (‘You make rain but I got the, I got the, I got the thunder’) which drew inspiration from Miserlou and put forward a new, sexier Little Mix (‘I’m a machine when I do it’). Their track Oops, a Motown pastiche complete with key change, was the great lost single from that album but the market had moved on and dark broody songs like Power were in vogue in 2017 when the song came out and hit radio.
Album five was LM5, the CD of which had four sets of bare legs upon it. The first single was Ed Sheeran co-write Woman Like Me, which was chosen against the girls’ wishes to lead with Strip. That song is inspired by the trap style, as the girls sing in triplets while the chorus strips the instrumentation right down to the beat (the song opens a cappella). It’s another self-empowerment anthem that includes the words ‘jiggle’, ‘provocative’ and ‘big ass’. The girls are all grown up!
While promoting the album the girls posed naked with slogans written across their body, drawing the ire of some right-wing commentators. Eventually, frustrated at the circus of promoting their single as young women not taken seriously, Little Mix split with their management. Almost instantly Jesy was able to make her documentary and lift the lid on exactly how damaging the social media trolls can be. Very few pop acts get to album six and still remain relevant; can Little Mix upset the status quo?