To hear former Little Mix member Leigh-Anne Pinnock tell it, when she tried to reach out to the label that originally signed her after she left the British girl group in 2022 the answer was crickets. Appearing on Paloma Faith’s Mad Sad Bad podcast on Tuesday (Jan. 6), Pinnock, 34, said she usually begins a new year with a good sense of what the next 12 months will look like.
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Not this year, though.
“This New Year’s… a couple months prior I had a fallout with my label and basically left them,” she said of her decision to split with Warner Records after three years, a 2024 EP, No Hard Feelings, an Amazon Music Live City Session that same year and a handful of singles.
“It was crazy,” she added. “Like, they weren’t responding to us and… they were basically ghosting. It was wild… It’s like, ‘how can you do that to someone?’” When Faith asked if Pinnock was ever given a reason for the alleged ghosting, the singer said that the label boss — who she didn’t name — rang her up to chat and then “exited the call after two rings. I was like, ‘okay.’”
All that to say that, according to Pinnock, she’s never actually gotten a proper explanation, describing the situation as “quite brutal.” Pinnock said when she looks back on her solo career she feels as if she was doing “good” and described the reported radio silence from her former label as “weird” and “frustrating,” firmly suggesting that she doesn’t think it was her issue. “I feel like it was them,” she said.
Last week she also shared a video with fans in which she reflected on her difficult year, explaining, “So, long story short, the label have said no basically. They don’t have a budget to put my album out, so I’m ready to take the reins. It will be a new chapter and I just can’t wait. I’m leading this s–t!”
At press time a spokesperson for Warner Music had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on Pinnock’s claims.
The good news, however, is that Pinnock is now in full control of her music and plans to release her debut full-length LP, My Ego Told Me To, via the Virgin Music Group on Feb. 20.
Actually, she’s been teeing the long-awaited album up for years, dating back to 2023, when she told Billboard that she’s an “R&B girl,” but wanted to incorporate other genres she loves, including reggae and pop sounds after releasing what was expected to be the collection’s first single, “Don’t Say Love.”
Pinnock, who has lined up a run of April European solo tour dates, has been teeing up the album for several months, posting an image of the cover in October on her Instagram, writing, “The journey to this moment hasn’t been smooth. I’ve navigated going solo after over 10 years in a group, left a label and gone independent. It feels like I’ve started from the beginning TWICE 🙈 but I truly believe everything has happened exactly how it was supposed to.”
Watch Pinnock talk about her label drama below (begins at 14-minute mark):
