Leigh-Anne has released her debut solo single, ‘Don’t Say Love’.
The former Little Mix star – who has ditched her surname, Pinnock, for her solo career – has given fans the first taste of what to expect from her solo music with the garage-tinged tune.
Leigh-Anne said of the track: “‘Don’t Say Love’ is about no longer seeking external validation and regaining my confidence and sense of self in a world where I often felt misunderstood and unheard. This video is a visual representation of me finding my voice. I’m excited to continue to do so with my first love, music.”
The 31-year-old singer’s bandmates – Perrie Edwards and Jade Thirlwall – have shown their support by sharing the release news to fans on their mailing list.
An email read: “Hey Mixers!
“Our girl Leigh-Anne has just released her first solo single!!
“Don’t Say Love is out now and we can’t wait for you to hear it.”
Leigh-Anne admitted in an interview published this week that she felt “undervalued” in Little Mix.
The pop star shot to fame in the girl group formed on ‘The X Factor’ in 2011, and she chanelled the “frustration, sadness and anger” she felt about being “overlooked and undervalued” with a “predominately white” fanbase and pop world into her first single.
She told Vogue.co.uk: “The pop industry is very white, we did have a predominately white fan base. It took me so long to understand why I was feeling so undervalued. I just blamed myself. My family would be like, ‘Oh, Leigh, you’re getting the same money. It’s fine.’ I just couldn’t accept that.”
One place Leigh-Anne did feel appreciated was Brazil.
She recalled: “Fans were chanting my name – I’ve never had a response like that and we’d been in the group for nine years.”
Her deeply honest upcoming debut studio album is all about the highs and lows in the ‘Shout Out To My Ex’ group, her relationship with footballer husband Andre Gray – with whom she has young twins born in August 2021 – and motherhood.
And Leigh-Anne admits she’s feeling confident as she embarks on a new chapter as a solo artist.
She said: “The first single, ‘Don’t Say Love’ is about wanting to be loved wholeheartedly, [like] the love that I have for myself. If it’s not that, then I don’t want it. That’s a journey, getting there. Within the group and in my career, I really felt like a lot of the time I was overlooked and undervalued. I really wanted to get that emotion across in the video: frustration, sadness, anger. I wanted to get that across in my first single, so I could just leave that girl and that feeling in the past. ‘My Love’ is a celebration of every type of love: owning who I am and stepping into my solo career and this new being, who gained all of her confidence back and knows who the f*** she is.”