With five chart-topping singles and three Brits, the singer realised her childhood dreams of pop stardom, but at a cost. She reflects on fame, loneliness, and why she no longer feels the need to compromise
Leigh-Anne Pinnock sits across from me in her manager’s office, curls piled in a half-bun on top of her head, dressed from head to toe in green. It’s Pinnock’s favourite colour – one of the many details shared in her memoir, Believe, written in collaboration with author Natalie Morris.
For the last decade, Pinnock has enjoyed phenomenal success as a member of Little Mix, the girl group formed on The X Factor in 2011. From the outset, Little Mix were underdogs, expected to exit the competition in the first week. Against all odds, they became the first band (and only girl group) to win. Against even greater odds, the four-piece went on to stake their claim in the pop history books as one of the UK’s biggest ever girl bands, racking up billions of streams, five chart-topping singles and three Brit awards, including best British group in 2021 – the first ever win for a girl group in that category.
Pinnock’s life story, a working-class-to-riches yarn about a young girl whose dreams of pop superstardom came true, reads like a fairytale. And indeed there are touches of magic sprinkled through the pages of Believe. But in every fairytale there are malevolent forces at work, and Pinnock spends much of the book trying to overcome the racism that tarnished her experiences.
“I always used to say: ‘Should I feel like this, having accomplished my dream?’” says Pinnock. “Why do I feel like I might as well not be here sometimes? Why does it feel like I’m not being noticed? Why do I feel invisible? Why am I not appreciated like the others? It just didn’t feel right.”
Believe paints a picture of Pinnock as a shy, reserved child who matured into a reliable, hard-working head girl. She always wanted to be famous – and was instilled with the confidence to chase fame by her parents, who told her she was capable of achieving anything. “I wanted to be a massive pop star and everything that comes with it. I expected what you saw in the movies: red carpets, fans screaming your name,” says Pinnock. Auditioning for The X Factor put her on the fast track, but reality hit almost the moment the group was formed, with fame feeling to Pinnock like a potent cocktail of rejection, self-doubt and loneliness.