For Perrie Edwards, the studio can be both a sanctuary and a suffocating cocoon. Last autumn, six months after beginning her solo career, the singer and Little Mix member pretty much resigned herself to life as a recluse, spending the majority of her time in her Cheshire house. Travelling to London for work would trigger her agoraphobia – an anxiety disorder characterised by a fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult – so her home recording space, named Studio 22, became a hideout whenever she felt overwhelmed.
In April 2024, the singer (known mononymously as Perrie) released her strident debut single “Forget About Us,” which was co-written by Ed Sheeran, and hit No. 10 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart. From an outside perspective, as the summer rolled on, it seemed as though things were in motion: she was active on social media and delivered a series of radio appearances, including a set at Wembley Stadium as part of Capital’s Summertime Ball, delivering a viral powerhouse cover of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
All the while, things began to unravel behind the scenes. Follow-up single “Tears,” which swapped its predecessor’s country inflections for smoky, ‘70s-inspired pop, dropped out of the U.K. top 100 after a week and was duly scrapped from the record she was putting together at the time. Edwards stopped posting to Instagram Stories and TikTok, prompting concern from her fanbase. The distractions and drains of anxiety on her energy as an artist and a human being, meanwhile, led to her bringing her therapist to work.
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“Getting an album out felt very untouchable for quite some time,” Edwards tells Billboard U.K. over Zoom, her chestnut blonde hair scraped back, relaxed in minimal makeup and a baggy black jumper. She is feeling reflective about the journey to her self-titled LP, due Sept 26 via Columbia. “I’m glad I stuck to my guns and did what I needed to do to make it happen.” She lets slip a chuckle. “I’m actually really proud, because I thought I wasn’t going to get an album at this point.”
Edwards credits the shift in her perspective to therapy, patience and family. In the early sessions for Perrie, she asked for each song to be A&R’d due to a lack of confidence in her own songwriting ability. Now she understands she was limiting herself; she has had to learn how to enact a fully integrated vision of pop star life, where fulfilling one desire inspires the next one.
After a fresh start in the new year, she began drawing on her longtime relationship with footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (“Cute Aggression,” “Absof–kinglutely,” “Bonnie & Clyde”) and the transformative pleasures of the beach (the Sam Fender-inspired “Sand Dancer”), both of which dissolved a level of self-seriousness in her writing. “If He Wanted To He Would,” a barnstormer of a breakup anthem, kicked off a new era this summer, catapulting Edwards back into the charts and setting a precedent for the effervescent, high-tempo revelry that dominates much of her upcoming album.
Solo projects are currently the focus for all three members of Little Mix, who won The X Factor in 2011 and enjoyed national exposure before any music had been released. The group – who started out as a four-piece before Jesy Nelson left in 2020, citing mental health issues – went on to make history on both the U.K. and US charts in their decade-long tenure, selling over 50 million records worldwide. Following Jade Thirlwall’s That’s Showbiz Baby! released earlier this month (Sept. 12), Edwards is the second Little Mix member to drop a full-length LP, while Leigh-Anne Pinnock departed Warner Records in May to forge an independent career.
Having faced her past insecurities head-on and uncovered some of her most emotionally honest songwriting as a result, Edwards tells Billboard U.K. about how Perrie is the “liberating” next step in her journey.
What kind of headspace were you in when you began working on Perrie?
Gosh, it was a completely different headspace to where I am now. I kept thinking, “What can I do to please people? What can I do to make this worthwhile?” When you’re trying to be creative, that’s the worst place to be in. You end up making music that doesn’t feel authentic, fun or genuine. I was excited and was going with the flow, but I also felt overwhelmed by the fear of the unknown.
I had to learn to not let outside voices and opinions guide my decision making. I am quite indecisive and I do get quite nervous; I need reassurance a lot of the time. At the start, I think I was going wrong because my gut and my intuition is normally right, like nine times out of 10. If I don’t feel or believe in something, it’s probably for a reason.
Now I’m at a point where I’m making the decisions. I set the track list and I’ve kind of taken control of everything now, unlike at the beginning, when I just didn’t have it in me. I was still figuring things out.
Was there ever a moment early in your solo career when you almost gave up or thought it wouldn’t work out? How did you push through?
For sure. I was having therapy every Friday, and in the majority of my sessions, issues around work kept coming up. I was just feeling pressure from everybody; I felt like there was pressure from the fans. It got to a point where my therapist was just like, “Can’t you just have a little break from it all then?” And I was like, “No, I can’t take my foot off the gas, this industry doesn’t really wait around for you. I don’t have that option.”
She then told me, “I think you could afford to step back a little bit, have time to think and chill out; go see Alex abroad [when he was playing for Turkish club Besiktas] and that might inspire you more when you go back in the studio.” When the new year came, I started working with producers and people that I’d not really worked with before. They brought out a renewed energy in me.
What lessons did you bring from years of group songwriting into your solo sessions?
When you’re in a group dynamic, it’s quite tricky to get things across. When it came to Little Mix, there were four of us working with songwriters, topline writers and producers all at once. Sometimes there could be like, nine people in a room writing a song in a room. It’s quite hard to get deep when there’s that many voices contending with each other at once. What I’ve since taken away from that is I probably write better in small groups, otherwise I just get caught up in the vibes. I learned how to take more control in my solo sessions, so I would go in with a song concept and lyric ideas straight away, which made a massive difference.
Twitter was pivotal to the early success of Little Mix. As the social media landscape has changed drastically in recent years, was there a moment when you felt like the world you came up and knew had passed?
When we were in the group, we were very on it with everything; we were so involved with every aspect of our work. But when I went solo, everything had changed so much. I remember when I released my first song “Forget About Us,” I was like, ‘Guys, where’s the schedule?’
My team told me I had to do social media stuff and make content, and I was like, “But what do you mean? There should be TV [appearances], talk shows and fun events!” I’m used to a full-on release schedule, which would mean that for a month, you ain’t got a life – you just work. Now there’s not as many promo opportunities, you have to be creative and think outside the box. I think even for labels, it’s a tricky industry at the moment.
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Where do you draw the line of how much you’re willing to share of yourself online?
I’m a very open book, but at the same time, I’m not a social media whiz. I’m not good at making TikToks. It’s really hard when you’re trying to think of a million things to do when it comes to a social media post. There’s an ongoing joke with the fans; they say, “If you want to travel back in time, go to Perrie’s Instagram, scroll three times and you’ll be back in 2017.” I get the joke because I’m f–king useless at it. I don’t see the point in it, but I get it’s different now, and people want to see everything all the time, so I am trying to do better.
Songs like “Bonnie & Clyde” and “Cute Aggression” don’t shy away from the emotions that often, as women, we’re told not to show in public – jealousy, obsession, being “too much.” How does the Perrie on record relate to Perrie IRL in that way?
Everything you hear throughout the album is 100% me. “Bonnie & Clyde” is very dramatized, but I do have those moments in my relationship where I’m looking at Alex and I’m like, “I love him so much, I would kill for him.” I think we all kind of go through that where we look at our partner and think, “I’m obsessed with you, but I hope you’re obsessed with me as well.” I just love letting it all out in a song, it’s like doing therapy.
In a crowded pop landscape, what do you think Perrie offers that’s unique?
Hopefully the album just cuts through. It’s music that I love so much and I just hope it’s an escape for people. When I’m feeling shit, when I’m scared, when I’m feeling anxious, SZA is my “anxiety artist.” She just calms me. So hopefully when people hear the album, it does the same thing and takes them away to some place else. That’s what I want the most.
