Little Mix are finally back, bolder and ballsier than ever.
“Our main aim is to conquer the world,” they tell us. Sounds about right, to be honest.
Little Mix were never meant to make it this far. Not just to Forest Gate, the perma-grey east London location of today’s photo-shoot involving a brand new Ferrari and a gaggle of confused school kids, but also to the cusp of world domination. Since they were fused together from the scraps of solo auditions on The X Factor in 2011, Jesy, Perrie, Jade and Leigh-Anne – for it is they – have sold 7.5 million records worldwide, landed six UK Top Ten singles and shattered a record previously held by the Spice Girls when their debut album nestled in the US chart at number four. Like Girls Aloud before them, they’ve done all this while knocking out the sort of forward-thinking pop bangers (DNA, How Ya Doin’?, Move, Salute, etc.) that keep their fans (or #Mixers) happy while also dragging in the sort of music bore that still uses the phrase “guilty pleasure”.
This summer brings with it a new Little Mix single in the shape of the amazing, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun-esque Black Magic, a song detailing the perfect way to make a boy fall in love with you (SPOILER ALERT: poison him). But it also brings with it perhaps the first real bump in the meticulously well-planned Little Mix journey so far. November 2014 was meant to herald a new Little Mix album, their third, continuing an annual tradition that started with 2012’s DNA and continued with Salute. Instead, they struggled to find a single, deciding to scrap what they’d come up with and start again after Black Magic, er, magicked into view.
“It’s not that the songs weren’t good enough,” splutters Jesy later when I ask if the scrapped songs were all dogshit. “They just didn’t fit with the album. All the other songs that we’d done were more of a continuation of the Salute album, but once we’d heard Black Magic and a few more we were like, these songs don’t fit with the album now.”
So by the time the all-important, sales-boosting X Factor live shows hover into view later this year, it will be two long years since a Little Mix opus. Basically an age in pop terms. Not that they’re thinking about that right now. No, for now, Little Mix are just worried about how best to shoo away the old man and his dog posing next to the sparkly Ferrari in the middle of Forest Gate high street. The prop for today’s shoot has started to draw a lot of attention from the passing shoppers, but for a small gaggle of school girls sneaking out for a cheeky can of Ting, the sight of Little Mix striding towards them – clutching each other for warmth on a June day that’s mistakenly shown up as mid-October – is enough to cause a sort of primordial, wordless mewing. Phones glued to their hands and permanently held at shoulder height, the whole thing is documented for posterity (or Snapchat, let’s be honest). Behind them, two lorry drivers take pictures “for their daughters”, while a little girl with a pink notepad stands nervously nearby hoping for an autograph. Every so often, a busload of people seem to do a double take in unison, while a man in a suit from Ferrari looms into view whenever a stiletto heel grazes the car’s immaculate interior.
Three hours later, and in the relative warmth of a nearby pub/dressing room, the four young ladies pouting for Great Britain in a chilly wind suddenly seem much more relaxed. As our chat gets underway, a teenage fan appears from nowhere in the pub doorway.
“Hi, I saw you from the bus and I was literally listening to one of your songs,” she says, visibly shaking. “It was the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. I was listening to DNA and then I came round the corner and you were standing there.”
“It’s called Black Magic,” I lol, but the lyrical reference to Little Mix’s brand new single is only picked up by Jade, who gives me a little nod as if to say “enough now” before a picture is taken with the new arrival.
BEAT: What do you think you’d all be doing now if you weren’t in Little Mix?
Perrie: Oh heck. I’d be screwed.
Jade: I’d probably have a bairn and be married.
Leigh-Anne: Do you think?
Jade: To that little shit! [she means a previous boyfriend, FYI].
Leigh-Anne: Same thing actually.
Perrie: [Suddenly] Eyy no! I wouldn’t dare. I wouldn’t be married, but I’d be a bum.
Jesy: I think I’d be working in a bar and still auditioning for X Factor.
Jade: I’d still be trying.
Perrie: I'd still be singing, definitely.
Jade: I’d still be doing X Factor until I got somewhere.
Leigh-Anne: We’ve all wanted it so much and it’s just incredible. We’ve come so far and done so well, and obviously we’ve got a long way to go, but it does still feel surreal. It still feels like a dream.
Jesy: Especially because we’ve been away for a little while as well.
Jade: We’ve had a little taste of what it would be like to not be doing this anymore because we haven’t really done anything this past year, just been in the studio. It’s been like, ‘wow, imagine if we didn’t have this anymore’.
Jesy: It was quite normal for a little while.
This normality only really lasted for three weeks – the time they took off at Christmas. Recording sessions for the second version of their new album – due in November – started in January, so it’s been relentless ever since.
“I think because we’re pop artists people expect us to just churn [albums] out over and over, but they forget that we do write a lot of our music and that takes time,” says Jade. “Adele or Ed Sheeran, they don’t just bang them out.”
Asked how much it annoys them that people assume they’re just presented with all their songs the morning they’re due to record them and the swearing comes out.
“It really pisses us off,” blurts out Jesy, causing a ripple of nervous laughter among the other three. “It does! We work for hours and hours in the studio. It’s so frustrating. I think a lot of it comes from us being a girl band and from The X Factor.”
Aware that Black Magic isn’t a co-write, Perrie’s quick to outline their overall stance on the pop songwriting dilemma.
“If we get given a song and it’s a smash we’ll bloody take it. But at the same time I don’t think people think we can write at all.”
“Rihanna, Beyoncé, they get loads of songs given to them and they’re not seen as puppets!” hollers Leigh-Anne, followed by a slight thump of the table.
For them, the fact their names appear on the credits of Britney Spears’ recent Pretty Girls single (“Britney’s been our idol since we were little and so for her to have one of our songs is just crazy,” squeals Leigh-Anne) is proof enough that they’re involved in the music they put their names to.
“I think the fact the Britney song’s come out and we’ve written on it might shut a lot of people up,” adds Jesy emphatically.
Chatting to Little Mix is that delicate tightrope between robotic media training – “this album is more fresh, it’s pop, it’s more personality-driven, it’s fun, it’s colourful...” rattles off Perrie at one point – and four early twenty-something best friends just chatting shit (almost literally, given that one conversational cul-de-sac ends up with some fart chat, Jade concluding it with, “Well, it’s better out than in”).
In fact, get them on the mundane and their personalities, and this odd bond that exists in pop bands starts to shine through.
BEAT: One of your new songs Weird People features a line about being on a bus. When were you last on public transport?
Jesy: Always! I was on the train the other day, that was fun. I was just on my way to Camden, having a little shop.
Leigh-Anne: I really love the tube because it feels like you’re having a day out. I love it.
Perrie: The last time I was on a tube was when we first got together and we went shopping in Camden. That was the first time we realised we could all do goat impressions. We pissed our pants on that tube the whole way back. That was such a good day.
Jesy: Jade, you get the train a lot don’t you?
Jade: Yeah, I always get the train. I’d get the bus in [South] Shields, but I’m a bit scared of the buses here [in London].
Leigh-Anne: I spent my life on buses so I’m done now. No more.
Perrie: I used to purposefully miss the bus and walk home and be like, “Soz mum, missed the bus for school.” She’d be like, “Get in the car!” I’ve always been a bit of a diva Debs.
This being pop in 2015, a social media-led space where pop stars are looked to as beacons of empowerment, there’s still a seriousness mixed in with all the goat impressions. Previous singles Change Your Life and Little Me have become self-empowerment anthems, extolling the virtues of loving yourself and promoting the fact that pop stars can feel a bit shit at times too. Their new album – which includes songwriting input from the sub-genre’s most needy exponent, Jessie J – will also feature a similar anthem or two.
“What comes with social media is the bullying side of things and that’s still rife, so to have songs that make you feel better about yourself is really important,” explains Leigh-Anne. “We asked the fans at the beginning what they wanted to hear for album three and the majority of what they said was that they wanted something that would give them confidence," chips in Jade. “Something with meaningful lyrics.”
It’s not all Deepak Chopra with an uplifting middle eight, though. While these self-help mantras are still under wraps for now, the other two songs I heard – the Jess Glynne collaboration Grown and the vintage, Motown-era ballad Love Me Like You (a likely second single) – do that thing that all great pop songs do: borrow from current trends (Grown doesn’t have a proper chorus, just a beat drop), take a bit of the past (the pure 80s joy of Weird People) and roll it all up into something approaching new but not new enough to scare people off. The songs are also proof, if proof were needed, that Little Mix are more than capable of keeping the Great British girl band tradition alive.
BEAT: If you could sign one other girl band member on loan, past or present, who would you pick?
Leigh-Anne: Oh my god, Beyoncé right?
Jesy: I don’t know, she’d steal the limelight. I’m not sure about that. Maybe one of the Spice Girls.
Perrie: Geri!
Leigh-Anne: Mine would be Mel B. We absolutely love Sporty Spice and Baby Spice, we’ve met them loads of times and they’re so lovely. I still call them by those nicknames actually. Imagine us doing a collab with the Spice Girls!
Jade: In this day and age?
Leigh-Anne: Yes.
Jade: Why aye!
Perrie: I wouldn’t be able to get on the vocals! I’d be dead on the floor. Mel C was in our Word Up video and that was enough drama for me for one day. I can’t breathe when I’m around them, it’s weird. They’re incredible.
Leigh-Anne: Didn’t you meet Victoria Beckham?
Perrie: I didn’t speak to them but I saw them at the closing ceremony at the Olympics and they were just walking down the corridor and it felt like I was watching the movie because they were all holding hands. Geri’s so crazy in real life. She told me she loved Little Mix and what we were about and I had a tear in my eye.
