Billie Piper is said to have an estimated debt of “£9 million” owed to Virgin Records.
The 41-year-old actress-and-singer was signed to Innocent Records, a subsidiary of Virgin Records, in 1998, when she was just 15 years old and released her debut single, ‘Because We Want To’, on the label.
And the ‘Scoop’ star – who left her music career behind her in 2003 after an extended break to focus on acting – has revealed she owes the record label a ton of cash and won’t be relaunching her music career anytime soon.
Billie is quoted by the Daily Mail newspaper’s Eden Confidential column as saying: “I’m still in debt to Virgin.
“If I ever release an album, which I won’t, I’d probably have to pay off that debt. It’s like a university debt.”
Sharing one of her other pet peeves from her brief stint as a pop star, she said: “You do all these big promotional tours which I absolutely hated. I hated going off.”
The ‘Doctor Who’ star released two Top 20 studio albums, 1998’s ‘Honey to the B’ and 2000’s ‘Walk of Life’, on Innocent.
‘Because We Want To’ reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and saw Billie become the youngest British artist to release a number one single in more than four decades.
The ‘Day and Night’ singer previously explained that people lost their “sense of moral compass” around her during her early stardom.
After revealing she was forced to turn off the Britney Spears documentary ‘Finding Freedom’ – which tells the story of the pop idol’s rise to stardom as a teenager and her subsequent breakdown – Billie explained that people lost their “sense of moral compass” around her during her early stardom.
When asked if she could relate to anything in the documentary, she told The I newspaper in 2021: “How people behave around you, and how they think they can have access to you. The sense of a moral compass is completely destroyed.”
Billie also said the programme made her reassess the amount of control she had in her music career.
She explained: “I thought I had a lot because I’d get to choose my outfits and my dancers, and I would be coming in with ideas for my choreographer.
“Creative input is very different to the overview. I had little to no agency at that time in my life.”
Billie revealed also claimed she saw lots of “adults behaving badly” during her time in the music industry.
She said: “It was a very jumped-up, moneyed time in the music industry, and I think people were massively seduced by that. I saw a lot of adults behaving badly.
“Just things they would talk about, jokes they would make… things they would say to you as a guy to a girl. Just totally inappropriate. Male banter, you know?”