Pixie Lott says she’s finally making the kind of music she wants to after growing tired of just doing what other people expected of her.
The Bromley-born singer and actress first burst onto the music scene back in 2009 when she was just 18 year’s old and topped the chart’s with her debut single Mama Do.
It has incredibly been 10 years since Lott, now 33, released her self-titled last album in 2014. Since then, she been a judge on The Voice Kids, starred in the West End, got married and even become a mum.
She has also been quietly toiling away on new music for the past five years, the result of which is her fourth album Encino, named after the place where the 1970s-inspired record all came together.
Describing it as a “labour of love”, she told The Standard: “It was now or never. I was really just craving to make a full body of work that was all about the stories and [that felt] very organic, authentic and raw. I’ve been wanting to make an album like that forever.
“I took myself out to Encino and wrote with my co-writers who believed in the vision of this album as well . We lived with it, really focused on every word and just made it what we wanted it to be and now it’s finally coming out and it’s so exciting.
“I feel like I’ve gone around the houses and travelled the world trying all of these different directions that I was put in and all of these different moulds and I realised that just going back to the start, stripping it all back and focusing on why I love music, that’s the whole reason why the album was made.”
While she says she finished writing the album before giving birth to son Albert - known as “Bertie” - last October, having him has made her see the collection of songs “from a new perspective”.
She’s also keen to have the youngster involved in this chapter of her life as much as possible, saying: “I want him to just join in all of the adventures and be a part of it all. We’ll go on a tour next year so he’ll definitely be coming.”
Things are going great for her on the acting front too.
Over the summer she filmed festive movie musical, Christmas Karma. which will be released next year and also stars the likes of Eva Longoria, Hugh Bonneville, Boy George, Danny Dyer and Nitin Ganatra.
She said of that experience: “Christmas and music are two of my favourite things. It was boiling hot we had our Christmas jumpers on and were eating our ice creams in the break but it was great, absolutely loved doing it.
“I play a working class girl in the story, lean in on that East London accent a bit. It’s a beautiful story, the director was amazing. It’s based on A Christmas Carol so its got a lot of heart and soul in it but it’s really funny as well.”
She also has a “Lott” of love for Dyer, who she describes as “such a genuine, down to earth and lovely guy.”
Adding: “I loved hanging out with him on the set.”
Asked about the future, she said: “I would [like to do more stage stuff], I’m focusing more on TV and film now because I feel like I’ve ticked that box spending a whole year doing that [with Breakfast At Tiffany’s]. It really does kind of get the old acting chops going so I really would love to do another play, but for a shorter stint. So if there are any projects that are a shorter stint or if the right musical came around. I think Cabaret looks so much fun.”
She said movie-wise she would love to do “big Hollywood blockbusters” and wouldn’t rule out joining the Marvel universe saying “Why not!”
“I love new experiences that broaden you as a performer so anything that takes me into a completely different world I think would be amazing. The roles I’ve been doing recently maybe I’ve been typecast - the working class girl in the Christmas film, the same with Made In Dagenham which I did earlier on in the year at the London Palladium which was a one night thing but she was a working class girl there as well.
“I love doing that, it feels very relatable for me and my family and kind of like my roots, but I’d love to do some things that are I guess less expected.”
