She Said She Was Leaving I Said Think Again
J esy Nelson is having her photograph taken. For the first time in her career, it's all about her. She is no longer one quarter of the hugely successful girl group Little Mix. Nelson is most to release her first solo single and she says she is happier than she has been in years. Only you wouldn't know information technology: she looks painfully self-witting, unsmiling and anxious.
Photos done, she disappears to modify clothes. When she returns, she'due south unrecognisable. Dressed in black T-shirt, leggings and platform trainers, Nelson is all smiles; warm, giggly and uninhibited. I tell her I've never seen such a contrast. She laughs. "When I'm in forepart of a camera, I don't know what to do. The other iii girls would be in the weirdest positions and look fabulous. If I did it, I'd await awful."
In 2019, Nelson made a powerful documentary most her life with the "other 3 girls", chosen Odd One Out. She talked about how she had always compared herself with the other members of Niggling Mix and found herself wanting. The origins of her low self-esteem went back to the very formation of the ring on the 2011 series of The 10 Factor. She had auditioned successfully as a solo vocalizer, just the judges decided she was better suited to being in a group. She was teamed upwardly with other solo entrants – Leigh‑Anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall and Perrie Edwards – to form the girl group Rhythmix, which was later renamed Lilliputian Mix. They went on to win that year's series. Simply during the show, Nelson was trolled horrifically on social media. "The outset affair I read virtually myself was, 'Is it me or does that daughter look disabled?' The next one said she really looks similar a rat. And the next ane was, 'God her face looks deformed,'" she tells me. "When you've never had any issues with your confront and so realise people are saying these things about you… " She trails off. "You retrieve if everybody is maxim it, it must exist truthful." The night Little Mix won The X Factor, Nelson, and so 20, wept and wished she was dorsum home with her mother.
Over the years, the trolling intensified. In the documentary, Thirlwall says: "We simply had to watch this amazing funny person become similar a broken doll. It was horrible." After Odd One Out aired, it seemed inevitable that Nelson'south days in the ring were numbered. She missed a few public appearances and was absent from some sections of the video for Sweet Tune, released in November. A month later, she appear she was leaving the grouping to expect after her mental health. She had hit stone bottom; today she explains just how bad information technology was.
O ur conversation starts with a guided tour of her many tattoos. On her upper arm information technology says, "Music is the strongest course of magic." "Information technology actually is," she says. She has been obsessed with music and dancing since she was a little girl. Who were her heroes? "Missy Elliott," she says instantly. "She is the queen. I would come home from school and the first matter I'd practise is put on MTV Base and report Missy Elliott's videos. She always had this petty girl in her videos and I so wanted to be her. I loved what nosotros did in Fiddling Mix, simply it wasn't necessarily music I would listen to myself. The music I love is old school R&B and hip-hop." Her new music reflects her ain tastes. "That's what I grew upwards with and what I always wanted to make, then now I am making it, it feels amazing."
Nelson, xxx, is the second youngest of four children who grew up in Essex. Her parents separated when she was five, and the kids were brought upwards by her female parent, Janis, a constabulary community support officeholder. Nelson attended the Sylvia Young theatre school, where she specialised in trip the light fantastic. Astonishingly, she says she had just once sung publicly before The X Factor, when she was 8.
Which takes us to the next tattoo – Nineteen.Viii.XI. "That'south the date we first got put together on The X Factor – nineteen August 2011." She moves down her trunk, pointing with a finger. "Then I've got one on my leg that says 'A tiger never loses slumber over the opinion of sheep.' Information technology basically ways I couldn't requite a shit about what people think almost me whatsoever more than. If you don't like me, then ta-ta."
I assume it must be a contempo tattoo well-nigh cocky-empowerment – a 2-fingered salute to the haters. She smiles. No, she says, actually information technology dates dorsum to the earliest days. "That was at the first of Lilliputian Mix." Did she actually believe she was a tiger? She shakes her head. "I wanted to believe information technology. Now I'm genuinely in the best head infinite I've been, but dorsum and then I used to pretend I was. I was actually like a little lamb. I do believe as you get older you lot learn not to requite a shit."
Maybe. Listen to Nelson tell her story, though, and it seems anything just a linear progression towards self-belief. As a little daughter, she says, she was perfectly at ease with herself. In her early on teens she was bullied and developed baldness. Past her late teens, she was working at a bar in Romford, e London, hugely popular and loving life. "Before I got into the industry, any of my friends and family will tell you I was the virtually confident person. Then it all cruel apart."
O n The X Factor, she got through the audition on a 3-one vote. Gary Barlow, who was head judge in the absence of Simon Cowell, gave her a large thumbs downwards. "Gary hated me. He was like, 'Oh Jesy, I constitute that audition terr‑i‑ble. Your voice is very gen-e-ric." She does a great impression of Barlow'due south monotone. Even though she hadn't expected to progress, she was devastated past his reaction. The judges couldn't sympathise why – later all, she'd but got through to the next stage. "I said to my mum: 'I'm non coming back on X Cistron, I'm never doing that over again.' Dermot [O'Leary, the presenter] was like, 'Why are you crying, you got through?'" Maybe this was a sign she was too sensitive for the business concern. "Perchance," she says quietly.
She says The X Factor did nothing to back up her when the trolling started. "When I was struggling, I didn't feel in that location was anyone I could talk to. We were like babies: Perrie was 17, I was 20. I'g hoping that programmes like this are now taking more responsibility. It's and then important considering nobody prepares you for what you're almost to go through."
What should reality shows such as The X Factor provide past way of support? "I call back they should have a therapist there and – whether y'all similar it or not – while you lot're in that procedure y'all have to go and encounter them." The week after we talk, ITV announced at that place would be no further series of The X Cistron, which ran for 17 years.
Piffling Mix was the second almost successful act to sally from The X Factor, after One Direction. The group developed a reputation for poppy hits about empowerment, independence and confidence; they spoke almost sisterhood and girl power. They have had 5 No 1s in the U.k. (their first ii singles, Cannonball and Wings, followed past Black Magic, Shout Out To My Ex and Sweet Tune). There were 30 Tiptop 40 singles; all half-dozen albums have made the top four in the UK (with the first two, Deoxyribonucleic acid and Salute, reaching numbers four and half dozen respectively in the United states charts); and they are the only girl grouping to spend 100 weeks in the U.k. Top 10. I ask Nelson when she was happiest in the band. Her reply leaves me flabbergasted.
"When nosotros kickoff got put together, before all the Boob tube stuff. We were all living at Perrie's mum's pub in Essex and, I call back for all of united states of america, information technology was the most magical time. It was then new and we didn't know what was going to happen. We'd just dream about what nosotros thought it was going to be like. We'd all go to Camden and buy matching outfits. In that location was no bad. It was all good." This was before episodes had aired, earlier anyone knew they existed? "Yes, but don't get me wrong. I still wouldn't alter my journey – information technology's fabricated me who I am today."
Is there always going to be i person in a group who feels "less than" the others? "I really practise believe that. I would be very shocked to hear of any band where everyone felt equal. I don't recollect that's possible, because you're e'er going to go compared; who they think looks better, who they think sings better. In that location's ever going to exist i person that people think is weaker." When people attacked her on social media, was information technology always about her advent? "Yeah, it was never about my singing or my dancing. It was e'er about how I looked."
To be off-white, Nelson isn't the but one who has struggled. In May, her bandmate Leigh-Anne Pinnock made a documentary, Race, Pop & Power, in which she talked about how her blackness made her "the least favoured" fellow member of the group. She said that she felt "similar I accept to work 10 times harder and longer to mark my place in the group because my talent solitary isn't enough".
Nelson'southward human relationship with social media is complex, as information technology is for so many people. Alongside the abuse came adulation. In the early days, Piddling Mix'due south management said they all had to get on to platforms such as Twitter and Instagram to heave their brand. While Nelson has experienced shocking corruption, she as well has an army of supporters (8.2 one thousand thousand followers on Instagram) hanging on her every word.
Things reached a nadir in 2013. Nelson says she was fond to social media; she couldn't resist reading what the trolls were saying, even though she knew it would make her unhappy. She convinced herself that there was a logic to it – knowledge was ability and she was arming herself. At present she knows simply how unhealthy it was. "It's similar a drug. I was reading it every day. The minute I got up it was the commencement thing I did. I'd type in 'Jesy Nelson' and so 'Jesy Nelson fat' or 'Jesy Nelson ugly', and read what anybody said almost me." That'southward terrible, I say. "Yes. I was trying to mentally prepare myself for what was to come up, and become used to what people were saying about me."
She became terrified of going out, and her absences were noted by the printing. "When it was in the papers that I wasn't turning up to piece of work, information technology was merely, 'Oh, Jesy'due south not well,' merely really I was hiding away. I didn't want to get papped because I'd got then insecure about the style I looked. In that location were times I didn't want anyone to look at me. I felt everybody hated me. I didn't know what I was doing wrong, and information technology consumed me." She started referring to herself every bit an "ugly rat".
Magazines ofttimes featured her, and at that place were simply ii topics – she was gaining weight or losing weight. The more she read about herself, the more she went on extreme diets. Information technology became a fell circle of cocky-loathing. "I'd simply consume a package of ham for a mean solar day or potable Nutrition Coke for a calendar week and non swallow annihilation. Then I call back, getting to my skinniest at one point, I went on the Daily Mail website, which I was obsessed with, and at that place was a pap picture of me and the headline was about me losing weight. All the comments were about 'Oh my God she'south far too skinny, she looks awful,' and I remember feeling so happy because that's all I'd ever wanted." She pauses. "At present I look back, it's mad. I went to encounter a therapist and she said, 'You know that'due south an eating disorder, don't you?' I never realised simply drinking Diet Coke for a calendar week was an eating disorder. My manager said, 'Jesy, you're and then tiny, you've got body dysmorphia.'"
Did the girls tell her the same thing? "Yes, all the time, just it didn't matter to me because everything I read was the contrary."
In November 2013, Footling Mix returned to The X Factor for a invitee visit. At this point, Nelson had already been criticised for losing too much weight. After their appearance, rightwing rent-a-mouth Katy Hopkins tweeted: "Packet Mix have still got a chubber in their ranks. Less Footling Mix. More Pick due north Mix." Nelson knew she shouldn't let anything Hopkins said get to her, only information technology did. "I thought, what is the fucking point? I'thousand literally starving myself. I've drunkard Diet Coke for a week and I'm still getting called fat. I went into a really dark identify and did what I did." She took an overdose and was taken to infirmary.
Her mother was devastated. "I think she felt like a bad mum – that she didn't know how bad it was. She was really disappointed in herself, which absolutely crushes me, because there was no way Mum could have known it was that bad unless I'd sat down and spoken to her nigh it. Mum wanted me to come up out of the group. My mum, still to this day, would rather me go dorsum to beingness a barmaid than doing this."
Her brother, a belongings developer, said she should stick it out and things would get better. "He's a tough cookie, and I'k actually glad he did say that because I wouldn't be here now if I'd quit." She means that if she had left Little Mix back then, she doubts she would take gone on to have a solo career. "He knew I was stronger than that and it was simply a phase that I could become through."
For a while things did improve. She deleted her Twitter business relationship – for Nelson, the most aggressive of social media platforms. Meanwhile, Lilliputian Mix continued to enjoy bang-up success in the singles and albums charts. But in 2018 a spat between their management company, Pocket-sized!, and their tape label, Simon Cowell's Syco, resulted in a transfer to RCA, another label under the Sony Music umbrella. Nelson says Piddling Mix were the collateral damage. "The incident that led to united states of america leaving the label was nothing to do with us every bit a band. It was to do with other people that worked for u.s.a.. We didn't want to leave." For once her language becomes a little cautious. She laughs and says it's at times like this that she misses having the girls around her.
Nelson thinks the movement to RCA was disastrous. "It was just a scrap shit considering we loved our whole team. When Little Mix started out, and for a long time, we were very authentic. Nosotros'd go in and write together, only as we got older and changed label, we lost centre in it a fleck. Nosotros were given songs and I hated them. I was similar, 'I don't desire to be on them – I don't like the vocal.' I don't e'er want to exist an artist that puts out something I don't believe in."
And so came the pandemic and lockdown, which proved life-changing. "I feel really bad saying this, but in lockdown it was the happiest I've always been. I was isolating with my all-time friend, and we just pissed around and laughed every solar day. I'd not felt a truthful inner happiness similar that for a very long time."
Concluding Oct Little Mix returned to piece of work to make a video for the single Sugariness Melody. "In lockdown I'd simply become a lilliputian porky pig and eaten whatsoever I wanted, and so they'd sprung on the states two weeks prior, 'Oh, y'all've got a music video.' I got in a panic because I'd put on weight." The panic was exacerbated by the styling for the video. "They were like, 'Y'all've got to wear a bikini!' Obviously, I don't have to habiliment it, just I knew I couldn't be in a video with the other three wearing a bikini and me in a dressing gown. I got in such a state about having to lose weight in 2 weeks and wear a bikini. I went dorsum to piece of work and was really downward about myself."
In the end, she wore a corset while the others displayed their midriffs. Nelson was oftentimes dressed differently from the others in videos. For example, while they wore white, she would frequently wear black. "I never wanted to wear white because I idea white made me expect fat," she says. "So I'd wear black and there would be this abiding joke online among fans: "Oh, someone forgot to tell Jesy about the white memo."
Simply before Little Mix appeared on BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, Nelson had a panic attack and Perrie Edwards had to have over her part. She'd had them previously, but never operation-related. "I was having these panic attacks out of nowhere. I couldn't understand what was happening. It got to the point where I thought, this is likewise much – I need to come up out of this now."
Nelson has been calm, only starts to cry. "I did the music video and had a panic assail, and it was pretty mental that day. God, I haven't really spoken about information technology and I'm getting upset. Pitiful." She brushes her tears abroad. "Afterward the video I simply got back in a really dark identify and ended up back in hospital. That was when my mum said, 'No more.'" The tears are withal falling, and she grabs another tissue. "I had already decided. And so the girls spoke to Mum and said, 'We think Jesy should come out of this now. She has to look after herself.'" So in the cease it was their decision as much as hers? "Yeah," she says. "Yep. I know there are people who call back I've permit the other girls down, and that I'k then selfish, but I do think there comes a time in life when yous practise have to be selfish and look after yourself, and it was really affecting me mentally."
What added to the hurt, she says, is that there were people who made it clear they were glad to see the back of her. "Certain people on my team didn't care." She comes to a stop. "I'm non talking about the girls. There were people on my squad who knew how I was feeling and didn't give a shit. They simply weren't bothered." She means management? "Yep. There was an energy when I walked into a room. I felt there were certain people on my squad who simply didn't want me to exist there."
I inquire whether her unhappiness has fabricated it tough for the girls over the years. "Of class. Class. Nosotros've all had our ain bug. Just it's never dainty to exist effectually someone who's downward and doesn't want to be in that location. As much as I needed to come out of it for myself, I didn't want to keep putting iii other people through that also."
Now Little Mix is a trio, two of whom are pregnant. Does she think the group will stay together? "I reckon they'll look afterwards their babies, go off and do their ain things for a while, so make a comeback together. I think they're just every bit sick as a three. They're notwithstanding doing information technology for girl power. I still honey them to pieces. They were like my sisters." Has she been in touch with them? "No, not as much. Not at present. I think we all demand time. It's a big affair that's happened."
I north March, three months after leaving Petty Mix, Nelson announced she was going solo and had signed a deal with Polydor. While the reaction from fans was positive, the trolls were back in force. They claimed she had used mental wellness as an excuse and had ever planned the new career. For the only time today, she sounds defensive. First, she insists, she was in no state to programme a solo career when she quit. 2nd, she had never ruled one out. "What I've said about a 1000000 times is that I never said I'm coming out of the band to never be in the public center over again. I said I'k coming out of Picayune Mix because I could not bargain with the pressure of being in a girl band, not that I can't deal with the pressures of being in the spotlight or beingness famous."
It's eight years since she deleted her Twitter account. Present, she says she tries non to read the negative stuff, and if she does she can cope with it. "Mitt on my eye, information technology's like h2o off a duck's back now." I wish I could believe her. She however seems sensitive to pile-ons. In May she was accused on social media of "blackfishing" – a term used to describe white people who have altered their appearance to the extent that they look racially cryptic. "I would never want to offend anyone, and that was really upsetting. I wasn't enlightened that'southward how people felt." She sounds bewildered by the allegation.
This time circular, Nelson says, she's determined not to succumb to the snipers. She believes she has found her vox in more means than one. In improver to speaking out about bullying, she feels she'due south testing herself vocally. "In a group, you never really become to prove off who you are because you get allocated a part. And then now I'thousand doing this, I go to sing how I desire."
Nelson'southward sent me one of her new songs called Boyz. It is R&B influenced, with an element of hip-hop thrown in for good measure (including a sample from P Diddy's Bad Male child For Life.) In the song, co-written with producers Loose Alter, she calls herself out for beingness attracted to bad boys.
Really, she says, it's not quite so elementary when it comes to relationships. "All but one treated me so lovely, like a princess. Simply a twelvemonth down the line I get a chip bored and they go my friend. I'm ever more attracted to someone who keeps me on my toes, which sounds mental, just that'south what excites me."
Over the past yr she had an intense on-off relationship with thespian Sean Sagar. He moved into her Essex home before the tertiary lockdown, then they bankrupt up; they unfollowed each other on Instagram in March. I ask if Boyz is dedicated to him. She laughs. "I don't feel I've defended it to him. With my ex, it was the offset time I'd been with someone where I wasn't in command. I savage madly in love with him." Was he controlling her? "Let's just say it was nothing like how I'd been treated earlier. I thought that's what I wanted. I wanted to be kept on my toes and take that chase, and hand on my heart I don't ever want that once again."
Going solo, she says, seems to adjust her. "Part of me feels I should be single for e'er because in relationships you have to cede so much. I similar waking upwardly and knowing this 24-hour interval is just for me and I don't need to worry about anyone simply me. I'm really non looking for a relationship any more than."
Mayhap the problem is that men just aren't that great? She beams. "I wish I liked women, I really do. I said that to my sis the other day considering she's gay. I said, 'Jade, I wish I loved women,' and she was like, 'Well, merely try it – yous never know.' And I said, 'No, I love men too much.' I simply honey the fashion men smell, I dearest muscles, and women don't accept that, practise they?" Some practise, I say. "Ha ha! I'll never rule it out, I'll just say that."
For now, Jesy Nelson is going to focus on herself. "I feel you only get 1 shot to make your impact as a solo creative person, then I'yard going all guns blazing. I don't desire people to be, 'Oh, that'due south nice,' or 'I expected her to do that.' I want people to be, 'Fuck my life, she's here!'"
I remind her what her bandmate Jade Thirlwall said almost her becoming a broken doll. Did she recognise that? "Aye!" If she was a broken doll and then, what is she now? "Now? I am a dolly that's been put dorsum together again. I'chiliad non going to say I'grand a new dolly; I'm not going to sit here and say, 'Oh my God, I'thousand not insecure any more, I'm the well-nigh confident person ever,' because that would be bullshit." If she's going to stay healthy, she says, it is vital that she's honest with herself – and her fans. "I nevertheless have my insecurities and I probably always will, only it's learning how to deal with them and accepting them. I even so have days when I get down, merely I'm definitely not broken. That's for sure."
Jesy Nelson's debut single will exist released in the autumn past Polydor Records.
In the Uk and Ireland, Samaritans tin be contacted on 116 123 or electronic mail jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is xiii 11 14. Other international helplines tin can exist found at www.befrienders.org.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/aug/21/jesy-nelson-on-leaving-little-mix-i-felt-everybody-hated-me
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