Little Mix hit back with Bounce Back single after splitting with Simon Cowell’s label

After fan demands for a new single, British girl group Little Mix have pressed the nostalgia button as they prepare for their tour of Australia.

Little Mix have become the biggest girl group in the world with their fans-first philosophy.

The British chart stars rescheduled their planned mid-year LM5 concert tour of Australia to December to satisfy global fan demand for a new single.

Their new single Bounce Back marks a new chapter for the band after splitting last November with Syco, the label set up by music mogul Simon Cowell who assembled them as a group on the UK X Factor in 2011.

Jade Thirlwall, Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jesy Nelson found a new label home with RCA after their management fell out with the Syco label.

Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Perrie Edwards, Jesy Nelson and Jade Thirlwall bounce back. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Bounce Back will press buttons for older pop fans as it is built around an instantly recognisable sample of Back To Life, the 1989 smash for British group Soul II Soul.

“We are dropping new stuff to keep our fans happy; they want more all the time,” Edwards said in Sydney.

“They have the LM5 album, they’ve bought tickets to see us but they want new stuff in the meantime.

“If we hadn’t released this song, if we waited until we had the next album ready to go, the fans would be waiting a long while. And our fans don’t like that.

“We have to keep it going because we don’t want them to lose interest. We like to feed them.”

Edwards and Pinnock said the new streaming era almost forced artists to release singles every few months.

The decades-old cycle of spending a year recording an album, releasing it and then touring for the next two years, is over as consumers with shorter attention spans demand fresh “content.”

“We feel like old grannies; we’ve only been in the game for eight years but it’s just so different now,” Edwards said.

“Music is so disposable now, people don’t go out and buy it, they just stream it and if you are not getting streams, it’s not charting. It doesn’t make sense to me anymore.”

Pinnock said it wasn’t only music that the fans expected from their artists but constant engagement on social media and non-music content such as their Eat In With Little Mix series on YouTube.

The series launched last month and features each of the women cooking dinner for the rest of the group and scored on their efforts.

Little Mix take guidance from their fans on career moves. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

“We knew they were craving content from us, even just us being silly together in the videos,” Pinnock said.

“They weren’t seeing enough of that and we heard that, that’s why we are doing the YouTube series, for them to see us being us. They love our friendship, seeing that.”

The four women cultivate a positive relationship with fans and try to call out any aggressive or negative behaviour within the community.

They watch online discussions and reactions to their music and videos to gauge how successful they are in feeding the fan beast.

“We always listen to them. They are the ones who buy into this. We have to take on board what sound they prefer, what videos they prefer, who they want us to collaborate with,” Edwards said.

“Their input is so much more important than the label and everyone else’s because they are the ones who will be listening to it for hours.”

Little Mix return to Australia to kick off their LM5 tour at RAC Arena, Perth on December 7 followed by concerts at AEC Arena, Adelaide on December 10, Melbourne Arena, December 13, Qudos Bank Arena on December 14 and Brisbane Entertainment Centre on December 16.