Leigh-Anne Pinnock has opened up on feeling "overlooked" as a member of girl group Little Mix in a "predominately white" fanbase and pop industry.
The mum-to-twins who is embarking on a solo career was a member of Little Mix alongside Perrie Edwards and Jade Thirlwall. Former band member Jesy Nelson left in 2020 before Little Mix disbanded in 2022.
Opening up on her experience in the group, Leigh-Anne said: "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," she told Vogue.
Leigh-Anne will launch her solo career with her debut track Don't Say Love, which is released on Friday.
Reflecting on her debut single, she explained: "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. I wanted to get that across in my first single, so I could just leave that girl and that feeling in the past."
Despite this, Leigh-Anne described being selected to form Little Mix was "the best thing that ever happened".
Earlier this month, Leigh-Anne married her footballer fiancé Andre Gray, who currently plays for Greek club Aris, in a Jamaican wedding ceremony where the couple exchanged vows in front of a close group of their friends and family.
Leigh-Anne previously spoke out on racism in the music industry in a BBC documentary in 2021 where she admitted to feeling constantly under pressure to work harder because she felt less popular than the rest of her bandmates.
She said: "All of these little feelings just built up, built up, built up. It was something I could never fully explain. And you can't pretend it's not happening, feeling invisible, feeling that people would just look past me...
"All these questions. Pushing myself constantly to do better. I just wanted to be on the same level and nothing I did would get me there."
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