Nina Nesbitt says getting dropped by her record label "turned out to be the best thing" to happen.
The 24-year-old singer – who previously dated Ed Sheeran in 2012 – was left devastated when she found out through her manager that Universal’s Island Records had decided to let her go, just as she was about to release her 2016 single ‘Chewing Gum’, but in hindsight it worked well for the Scottish star.
Speaking to The Official Charts Company, she admitted: "It was horrendous. I was basically shelved for two years and I actually made an album that never really came out. I didn’t know that I was shelved, so I thought we were putting an album out.
"I actually got dropped the day before ‘Chewing Gum’ was supposed to come out. I had no idea, and they were like, ‘Oh we’ll still put the single out’ and I was like, ‘Well, can I just leave?’"
Nina admitted that it was a "tricky situation", but that it actually enabled her to be more independent and so she taught herself production.
She said: "It was a weird situation but I’m totally cool with them all now.
"To be honest, it wasn’t my A&R that was the issue, it was a tricky situation and I don’t think it was the right fit for either of us. It pushed me to go off and learn production myself and take control of things a bit more, which turned out to be the best thing that could have happened – but at the time it really didn’t feel like it."
Nina ended up signing to Cooking Vinyl – who also have the likes of Richard Ashcroft and TLC on their roster – not long after she left Island, and she is set to release her second album ‘The Sun Will Come Up, the Seasons Will Change’ – the follow-up to 2014’s ‘Peroxide’ – on February 1.
Though she has produced much of it herself, Sam Smith producer Fraser T. Smith helped her on the track ‘Loyal To Me’ and another song, and ended up teaching Nina "a lot".
She said: "Fraser didn’t come on until last summer and we were already in the swing of it by that point, but we really needed help on ‘Loyal To Me’, because I was just about to put the song in the bin because I couldn’t find the right production!
"I thought that he would absolutely nail it and I was really happy with what he did, and then we wrote a song together after that with Jin Jin, who’s written a lot of Jess Glynne hits, and that came about literally the week before I handed the album in.
"He’s been around for so many years and he’s so talented. It was really nice having someone that has been doing it for so long who’s had so much success – I learnt a lot from him.
"I wrote and produced a lot of it in my room sat on my bed, and I worked with Lostboy and Jordan Riley, who are about my age, which was a help. I like that it was a low-key affair and now they’re smashing it as producers as well."
Nina Nesbitt reflects on being dropped by label
