Little mix discuss a decade at the top, women power and more in a new interview

The trio made up of Leigh-Anne Pinnock, 29, Jade Thirlwall, 28 and Perrie Edwards, 27, became the biggest girl group in the world as a four-piece with Jesy Nelson, 29, leaving the group last December calling it “the most incredible time of my life”.

Having spent so long at a unit together – Jade said in a new interview with Glamour just how the changing line-up has made them reflect on their time, and position, in the group? saying “This time has given everyone perspective of what you truly love doing in life and figuring that out,” Jade then bursting with excitement added because she is “so excited to talk to new humans”.

Leigh-Anne adds “It’s definitely important. It’s going to take time. It’s not something that happens overnight after being together 24/7,” before Jade continued “we do heavily rely on each other, so it’s been healthy to take a step back and think, ‘What do I want?’. As we come together and work together this year, we’ll have an even better and healthier relationship with that perspective. This time’s taught me that I am still figuring out who I am, too. I don’t really know who I am. I used to get scared at that thought, but now I’ve stopped punishing myself for not knowing. It’s beautiful that we’re still a group, but we want to help push each other to do our own thing, too. It’s like a new dawn of Little Mix,” she smiles.

In full suport one one another Perrie reassure Jade that they are always looking for each other to make decision and it feels weird when they have not been together ‘Oh, they’re not there,’” Jade then mimes looking around for her bandmates. “I’ve forgotten that I can make decisions on my own. It’s a really weird feeling.”

As big supporters of Little Mix we loved Leigh-Anne comments and she rightly stateed, “We’ve made music to boost people up, make people happy and to inspire them.”.

The girls have created six stunning studio albums, 27 singles – two of which have reached the coveted multi-platinum status – sales of more than 50 million albums and singles worldwide, 100 award nominations, 48 award wins including two Brit Awards and six MTV Europe Music awards too!

Having sold out arenas they said “We’ve shown that women standing together works, even with all the obstacles in our way. Right from the beginning, we were the dark horse on The X Factor, and no one expected us to do well,”.

Discussing their bond, Leigh-Anne continues, “I do think our sense of sisterhood is better for when we do have sh*t times together over the years or if we’ve got on each other’s nerves, because it’s never been an option to not be together and we’ve always known that we are sisters. It helps you to learn forgiveness, learn to be more patient and be more compromising because you’re in a group dynamic where it’s literally that or you don’t be together.”

Perrie added “We’re all going through the worst situations of our lives. We just want to crawl in bed, put the duvet over our heads and just never come out. But you know you’ve got people depending on you, you’ve got three other girls that need you there, you’ve got fans all over the world; you don’t want to get a bad reputation.”

On another topic, the power of record labels; Lee-Anne adds: “We’ve always had a voice as a four, we’ve been a force and we’ve always been very, ‘we stick together on things’. But there have been times, like with [music] labels, [where they’ve] backed us into a corner and it is obviously mainly men; they see us as four women and don’t take us seriously. We’ve had that for our whole career. Even until recently. I’m asking, ‘Has much really changed?’”

“Learning to say ‘no’ has been quite a big thing for us,” Jade adds. “For a long time, we were always scared of pissing people off – and you do get backed into a corner and it’s like, ‘Well, if you don’t do this, you can’t have this.’” Perrie jumps in with one telling word: “Blackmail.” Jade agrees, “It’s weird that it still happens, but then all of a sudden when that power is taken away from whoever’s abusing it, you realise, if I just say ‘no’ more often and we stand together with that decision, it works!”

“Leaving our label was a massive step for us,” Leigh-Anne tells me. “But because LM5 (their fifth album featuring bangers such as Woman Like Me) was around that time, it didn’t get the recognition it deserved. With everything that happened, it was tarnished a bit and we always look back on that – especially me and Jade (who co-wrote many of the songs) – and think it’s so annoying because we worked so fricking hard on it! But you have to think, ‘You know what, we all stood our ground, and we made that movement for a reason!’”

The confidence, experience and music the girls have all had has been an incredible for Perrie, Leigh-anne, Perrie and we wish Jesy a very successful and happy career. Who knows what the future holds but one thing we are sure of is that their music will live on and the little mixers will hold all four in their hearts.