Leigh-Ann Pinnock discusses being overlooked in Little Mix “I was so undervalued”

Leigh-Ann Pinnock described her experience of being overlooked in Little Mix, saying it caused her to be “frustrated, sad and angry.” The 31-year-old came to fame when the girl group was formed in the X-Factor in 2011.

However, she felt overlooked by their “predominately white” fandom as well as the pop industry. In a new interview with Vogue, she explained: “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.”

The English singer is now set to kick off her solo career with the track Don’t Say Love which she released recently and helped her with channelling the “frustration, sadness and anger” that she experienced while in Little Mix.

“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,” she added. “I wanted to get that across in my first single, so I could just leave that girl and that feeling in the past.”