Girl band Little Mix talk about their sexy new album, Get Weird, and the ruthless pop world
AHEAD of a national tour, girl band Little Mix open up about the ruthless pop world, their sex appeal and the stress of singing while dancing.
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LITTLE Mix are actually friends.
You cannot say that for all pop bands, particularly for as-constructed-on-TV ones.
But since winning the UK X Factor in 2011 the foursome have seen success bond them closer rather than drive them apart.
The band — Jade Thirlwall, Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, and Jesy Nelson — are in Melbourne on the final leg of Australian interviews for their third album Get Weird.
It comes on the back of hits Wings, DNA, Change Your Life (the House Rules theme, y’all) and Salute, which have sold 2.5 million singles, with five million copies of their two albums sold so far.
In Melbourne, the 20-somethings are tired and promotional. Thirlwall sits in the hotel foyer waiting for her band mates, plotting how she’ll stay awake for the next five hours before the long haul flight back to England.
Seasoned travellers, they know sleeping in the afternoon equals wide awake across the Atlantic.
When they get home, they’ll have a generous two days off. In pop band terms, that’s like a month.
When the other girls arrive downstairs, they’re refreshingly self-sufficient. Again, you cannot say that for all pop bands.
There’s no stylist toying with their outfits before photos, no hairdresser or make-up artist fawning over them. Indeed they grab the hotel luggage trolley themselves and want to use it as a prop for the photos before draping themselves over it.
They’re soon doing an impromptu version of new single Love Me Like You in the trolley, being pushed across the foyer.
The promotion finish line is in sight, and even when they clock off after this, the last interview, they’re already planning what they’ll do together until they fly out, together, that night.
That sisterly closeness protects the band, especially after a very public split between Perrie Edwards and former finance Zayn Malik of One Direction.
Edwards kept working when news of the split broke in August. Footage of her crying after singing new breakup songThe End rather ghoulishly went viral at the time.
Her band has fielded all questions about the split that have got through the net — in Australia a publicist sits with the band just in case someone doesn’t adhere to the ‘No Zayn questions’ request.
In Sydney a prank with radio shock jocks Kyle and Jackie O saw the singers storm out when Justin Bieber and One Direction were mentioned.
Nelson notes it’s backfired on them, headlines about ‘Little Mix Storm Out of Radio Interview’ have gone global, with some less reputable media organisations burying the fact it was a prank to push the Bieber and 1D feud factor.
Get Weird arrives two years after second album Salute. It’s had a difficult gestation.
“It was f---ing gruelling,” Edwards clarifies.
The band took a long time to find their sound, wanting to move on from the ‘90s R&B feel of Salute.
“We went through a stage of really wanting songs with a ‘drop’,” Edwards says of the trademark beat ‘drop’ favoured by electronic kings Calvin Harris and David Guetta.
“But it just wasn’t happening. So we thought `F--- the drop’!”
One song on Get Weird, I Won’t, was written with UK chart-topper Jess Glynne during the dark days of trying to write the right songs.
“That’s a really honest song,” Nelson says. “We wrote that when we didn’t have the album finished, we didn’t know what the single would be, we were all so drained. Every song we’d come up with it was, `Mo, that’s not happening’. The song is about not giving up.”
They’re aware of the cutthroat world of trying to get your song on the radio, especially when they’re in the position of having success in America (both albums have gone Top 10 in the US, the last UK girl band to manage that was the Spice Girls) as well as the rest of the world.
“Pop is hard,” Edwards says. “We don’t want to put out any old sh--. We want to put out quality tracks. A lot of stigma comes with girl bands, people think you just sing and prance around. No one really knows we actually write our own music.”
One song they co-wrote, Pretty Girls, didn’t fit Get Weird and wound up being recorded by Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea this year.
“We’d recorded our own version,” Nelson admits. “So when we heard Britney and Iggy on it, it was weird, because only a few months before we’d heard ourselves on it.”
“It didn’t go with the album,” Edwards continues. “I feel like Britney is the only person who can get away with that line ‘All around the world pretty girls’. They absolutely smashed it. They owned it.”
The song was considered a flop by many, including Azalea, who called Spears out for not promoting it more.
“I don’t give a crap who thinks it was a flop,” Nelson says. “Britney Spears sang our song. That’s not a flop to me.”
There are a few songs in their vaults floating around, one with UK act MNEK is “a banger” that they might give to others or rework themselves.
“The song with MNEK is so good we thought it’d be our first single,” Nelson says. “But when Black Magic came around all them songs we’d done didn’t fit.”
Their friends Ed Drewett and Camille Purcell wrote Black Magic with them in mind.
“As soon as we heard it we knew it’d be a great pop hit,” Edward says. “So we took it!”
“If a song gets given to us and it’s insane we’d never turn it down just because we didn’t write it,” Nelson says. “That’d just be stupid. We’ll take anything that’s fantastic.”
The song hit No. 1 in the UK, went top 10 in Australia and throughout Europe and they’re still working it in America, with a performance on Ellen locked in next month.
“When we released Black Magic we were a little bit nervous, we’d been away for a long time,” Edwards says. “You can’t disappear for a year in pop, the fans can forget about you. But our fan base are so intensely supportive, we can’t thank them enough, We never thought we’d bring out a song after a year away and it’d be No. 1 (in the UK) for three weeks, it’s incredible.”
The ‘80s feel of Black Magic also helped the band find a linking sound for Get Weird.
“My mum and my aunty got on YouTube with a full bottle of Jack Daniels and made a list of ‘80s influences,” Edwards laughs. “They gave me a massive list, we all listened to it to get in that ‘80s vibe, for songs like Black Magic and Weird People.”
Camille Purcell, who they met when she was their X Factor vocal coach, is their main co-writer.
Get Weird also sees the girls write with Jess Glynne and Jessie J.
“Some songwriters don’t give you a say,” Nelson says.
“Those songs don’t generally make the album,” Edwards points out. “Jess Glynne is young, she knows what young people like.”
“It does make a difference if you write with other female songwriters,” Edwards continues. “They end up becoming more sassy songs.”
Nelson notes: “If you put girls together in a room what are they going to talk about? That’s what the album’s like. Honest, fun, tongue in cheek, a bit naughty.”
Get Weird’s ‘naughtiest’ moment is A.D.I.D.A.S — or “all day I dream about shhh” according to the self-censored lyrics.
RELATED: Little Mix show of the sexy side of new album
Without using the word “sex” there’s references to Fifty Shades Of Grey, milkshakes, Brazilians and icing cakes.
“A lot of songs we wrote this time were quite dirty to be honest,” Nelson says. “We got a bit carried away. It’s best to throw it all in there, make it as dirty as possible and then strip it back. Rather than being too safe. It’s like when Spice Girls did 2 Become 1, you never really thought about what the meaning was as a kid. When you listen to A.D.I.D.A.S it’s very sexual but it’s a lot of innuendos, so a lot of kids won’t get it. We know we’ve got a young fan base.”
“At the same time we’re growing up, we do want to talk about things like that because girls are going through that,” Edwards says. “The new single Love Me Like You was actually meant to be titled F--- Me Like You. Fans that would have been with us since the age of 14 are now 18, we forget that.”
They’ll tour Get Weird next year, hitting Australia in May for their first tour, already preparing to get match-fit for pop’s eternal struggle — singing live and dancing.
“It’s so hard and no one understands how hard it is,” Nelson says. “What’s really frustrating is you’ll do a really good vocal and someone will go ‘They’re miming’ and you think `I’m definitely not, I’m just really good at singing!’ It’s kind of a compliment, but sometimes you want to say `Shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about’. If you sing really smooth people assume you’re miming just because you’re not out of tune.’’
Edwards quotes the explicit Kanye West/Jay-Z tune HAM when she adds “Luckily we’re in a group so we can go HAM on the choreography and draw it back in the slow songs. You have to find the balance. You have to keep up your fitness. We do a lot of rehearsals before the show, lots of singing on treadmills.”
Having an album called Get Weird also gives them creative licence on stage. “We can be as bonkers as we like,” Nelson says. “Anything goes, which is exciting. We want people to walk out going ‘I don’t understand what I’ve seen but it’s the best experience of my life’.”
HEAR: Love Me Like You is out now. Get Weird (Sony) is out November 6 and Little Mix will tour Australia in May, with details announced shortly.
Originally published as Girl band Little Mix talk about their sexy new album, Get Weird, and the ruthless pop world
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