Little Mix cook up a storm: In the two years since they became the first group to win The X Factor, Little Mix have taken the charts by storm – both here and now Stateside

PUBLISHED: 00:01, 20 October 2013 | UPDATED: 00:01, 20 October 2013

As the girls prepare to launch their second album, Benji Wilson finds out what’s next on the menu

Pick of the Mix, from left: Jade, Perrie, Jesy and Leigh-Anne

Little Mix, the peppiest, perkiest girl band in pop, are absolutely exhausted. It’s 7am and they are already in make-up, getting glammed up for their YOU photo shoot. Jade Thirlwall, a self-confessed not-a-morning person, is as asleep as you can be while someone is tugging at your hair. Jesy Nelson and Perrie Edwards occasionally mumble at one another. Leigh-Anne Pinnock is largely comatose until a hefty bee bumbles into the room and, presumably starstruck in the presence of Little Mix, crashes down in a stunned daze on to her lap.

‘Oh my God, I hate them,’ she yells, leaping up and hotfooting it round the studio like a cartoon character. The bee is removed. Order is restored. Everyone slumps down in their chairs again.

Little Mix have every reason to be a little tired. In the past six months they’ve been to the US, touring a debut album, DNA, that went straight to number four in the Billboard charts. They’ve also recorded a new album in the space of two weeks. And there’s been the small matter of Perrie appearing at the premiere of the One Direction movie in August with an engagement ring on her finger, courtesy of her boyfriend, 1D’s Zayn Malik.

To use a favourite Little Mixism, it’s been ‘mental’. And it’s about to get mentaller. Next they hit Japan, because their album has taken off there, too. Which is why they have also crammed in a few Japanese lessons.

'You just learn to ignore the bad things. People are slating you to make themselves feel better'

‘We just thought it would be nice if we could speak a little bit of Japanese – like a compliment to the fans, really,’ says Jade. ‘But I don’t think it’s going to go down too well. I’m a bit slow with different languages.’

‘Ohayo gozaimasu!’ says Perrie. ‘It means, “Hi, how are you?” Or I think it does.’

Every major pop star wants you to believe that they’re just an ordinary Joe or Josephine, but sit these four girls from South Shields (Perrie and Jade). Romford (Jesy) and High Wycombe (Leigh-Anne) on a sofa together and what you get is something akin to a natter on the bus home from work. Yes, they’re happy to talk about the stars they met on their recent US tour (Jessica Alba, Johnny Depp) but they really come to life when they’re talking about their favourite soaps (they proudly tell me about how the band have been mentioned on both EastEnders and Emmerdale) or their favourite comfort food (bangers and mash, beans on toast, omelette and beans for Perrie, Jade and Jesy; pan-fried sea bass for Leigh-Anne, which gets a laugh from the others.)

But then it wasn’t that long ago – two years, to be precise – that Little Mix were just four ordinary girls, who were put together by the judges on The X Factor’s eighth series and went on to become the first group to win it.

‘I used to work in Pizza Hut,’ says Leigh-Anne. She applied to the show after her A-levels and calls her experience ever since ‘some sort of weird, amazing daydream’.

I say that it didn’t look like a very nice dream when they were all slumped in their make-up chairs, half asleep.

LEIGH-ANNE WEARS TOP, Topshop; Skirt, Finders Keepers; BANGLE, Cartier; BRACELETS, Queensbee, from Wolf & Badger

JESY WEARS DRESS, Maje; NECKLACE, Alexander McQueen, from Feathers Fashion, and SHOES, Topshop

PERRIE WEARS DRESS, MSGM, from Harvey Nichols; TOP, 3.1 Phillip Lim, from Harrods; EARRINGS and EAR CUFFS, Thomas Sabo

JADE WEARS JUMPER, JW Anderson, from Feathers Fashion; SHIRT, 3.1 Phillip Lim, from Harrods. PLAYSUIT, Topshop

‘I’m not saying it’s easy,’ says Leigh-Anne. ‘It’s really hard, like all the early starts and loads of different things that come with that. But at the same time, I’m having the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. I’m with my three best friends, like my three sisters. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’

Best friends? Sisters? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As a professional cynic I’m looking for the cracks in the smiles, any sense that Little Mix don’t actually mix that well. It’s not like their path to fame has been a doddle – they may have won The X Factor but they’ve been overshadowed by One Direction who came third the previous year. Plus ‘X Factor winner’ is not necessarily the greatest long-term-career calling card. And they’ve already had their ups and downs in the press, with Jesy’s much-publicised battles with her weight and rumours of Zayn’s infidelity.

But as they snuggle together with cups of tea and smiles, they genuinely do seem to be close. Jesy is the prankster, with a stream of impressions and voices, Leigh-Anne has a steely focus, Perrie is a little wild and wacky – she loves 80s hair rock while the others prefer Motown and R&B – and Jade is the spokesperson and mother hen.

‘We are all different but we’re very, very similar as well,’ says Jesy. ‘Like we’ve all got the same banter, we all find the same things funny and we’re all just a bit fruit-loopy. But we have different styles, different taste in boys.’

The girls became the first group to win The X Factor in 2011

Little Mix on the Big Top Stage at the Isle of Wight Festival 2013

‘Perrie is the bubbly one,’ says Jade. ‘Except in the morning.’

‘Jesy’s the clown. She’s the funniest person I’ve ever met in my life,’ says Perrie.
‘Jade is the responsible one,’ says Jesy. ‘She’s a brainbox as well,’ adds Leigh-Anne.

Perrie loves having her photo taken; Jesy, not so much. ‘You’re a singer. It shouldn’t be about what you look like, but that’s what comes with it, isn’t it? I feel a bit silly. The photographers say, “Be sexy and be this or that” and I’m like, “Er, what do I do?” I get a bit awkward.’

In person Jesy is actually the least awkward and most forthcoming of the bunch, but they’re all at ease together and it’s easy to forget how young they are – Perrie and Jade just 20 and Jesy and Leigh-Anne both 22. All the girls talk about missing their mums and all of them cite buying their parents new houses as being part of ‘the dream’.
‘That’s the hardest thing, to be honest,’ says Jade, in her sharp Geordie accent. ‘Not seeing friends and family…it’s so, so hard. I had one of my best friends stay over with me for a week the other day and I was the happiest I’ve ever been because I’ve missed her so much. It’s hard being away but then at the same time, without you lot I don’t know what I’d do!’

That comment leads to mutual hugs and mouthed ‘love-you’s. It might seem a little sickly but there’s a serious point there – all bands fall out eventually. They’re groups of young people who suddenly have to spend all hours of the day together with people who, in the case of Little Mix, they didn’t choose as friends, let alone full-time companions.

Jade, Perrie, Jesy and Leigh-Anne

‘We do have our little bickers every now and again,’ says Jesy, smiling. ‘But I think we’re actually abnormal because we really don’t argue. We have too much fun to be arguing. I argue more with my actual mates than I do with
this lot.’

What bickering there is tends to be about ‘stupid little things. Who’s going into the studio first, who’s doing styling first, even who’s going to get in the back of the taxi!’ says Perrie.

The point is they all recognise that, without each other, they have nothing. ‘If we didn’t have each other,’ says Leigh-Anne, ‘none of this would have happened. So you can’t ever really forget that.’

Little Mix believe that there was some element of destiny, a greater force even than Simon Cowell, that brought them together.

‘Listen to this, right,’ says Leigh-Anne. ‘Jade’s mum is called Norma and that was my grandma’s name. Jesy’s brother is called Johnny, which is my dad’s name and Perrie’s brother’s name. Perrie’s mum is called Debbie which is my mum’s name.’

‘Everything links!’ says Jade. ‘And Perrie and I lived in the same town, five minutes away from each other, knew all the same people but we just never met.’

‘And my first kiss was with a boy called Connor Robinson,’ says Perrie. ‘So was mine!’ says Jade. ‘But a different Connor Robinson.’

This goes on right through their auditions for X Factor – Jesy shared a room with Leigh-Anne at boot camp, Jesy’s sister is related to Leigh-Anne’s cousin, and so on.

‘It’s just all been in sync somehow from the start,’ says Leigh-Anne, and they laugh, all in sync.

Yet if Little Mix was somehow meant to be, that hasn’t meant they’ve had an easy ride. ‘We were only young girls when we first started,’ says Jade, ‘and at that age, if you see one bad comment on Facebook, it gets to you. And then you go into this world and it’s magnified by a million.’

Perrie with her fiancé Zayn Malik of One Direction fame

‘You just learn to ignore the bad things, really,’ says Perrie, who as Zayn’s other half has had more than her fair share of Twitter abuse, ‘because the people who are slating you on the internet are probably massively overweight with hairy pits, smelling of BO. Do you know what I mean? They’re doing it to make themselves feel better.’

Even with the exposure, the album sales, the photo-shoot entourage, they insist that it’s not like they are living some kind of charmed life.

‘I love doing a trip to Tesco,’ says Perrie. ‘I find it funny when people get really shocked that I’m in there because I’m like, “Well, how am I meant to eat?” It’s a fun day out for me because I never have time to do anything.’

Of the four girls, Jesy has the most recognisable face: ‘She gets noticed everywhere,’ says Leigh-Anne.

‘In certain situations, I can’t go out,’ says Jesy. ‘Like when you go to a shopping centre, there’s just no point because once you do one picture with someone, it ends up becoming a signing.’

And it’s not just the general public who want a piece of Little Mix. On their last album they worked with Girls Aloud star Nicola Roberts, Shaznay Lewis from All Saints, T-Boz from TLC and rapper Missy Elliott. And look out for more hot names on the second one.‘We do most of the writing,’ says Leigh-Anne. ‘I think you’ll see in the next album how we’ve progressed as writers as well as singers.’

Which only leaves the small matter of Perrie’s engagement. It’d be fair to say that it was a bit of a shock for her bandmates.

‘Oh my gosh!’ says Leigh-Anne, who is dating ex-footballer Jordan Kiffin. ‘I’m so happy for her, but I feel that personally I’m not ready.’

Little Mix with their X Factor mentor Tulisa

Has it caused the others to think about their relationships?

‘We’re not ready either,’ says Jade, who is in a relationship with Sam Craske from dance troupe Diversity (the act that beat Susan Boyle to win Britain’s Got Talent in 2009). ‘I think it depends on the boy: the boy’s got to ask.’

‘I would get serious if I had a boyfriend!’ laughs Jesy, who split with Jordan Banjo, also a member of Diversity, earlier this year.

And Perrie? Blushing a little, she says, ‘When the time’s right, the time’s right.’ It’s right for Perrie, and right for Little Mix.

Little Mix’s new single ‘Move’ will be released on 3 November. The album Salute will follow on 11 November

IN THE MIX

★ Music musts
Jade I’ve been listening to Bastille’s new album.
Jesy Ciara’s new album is amazing.

★ Reading
Jade I’m reading Paper Aeroplanes by Dawn O’Porter.
Perrie I read the bag of a pasta packet to find out how long you’ve got to put it in the microwave for – that’s about it.
Jesy Ooh, I’m about to read Jessie J’s autobiography.

★ Fashion faves
Perrie I adore my Prada handbag. And I love my Louis Vuitton shoes.
Jade I’ve got a parka that I love from Zara. I never take it off. My mum wants to burn it.

★ Best bling
Leigh-Anne I have a gold necklace that my boyfriend gave me when I was 21. It has both our initials, my birthday, the day that we met and a rose on it.

★ Tipple of choice
Jade We love a good Malibu and coke, don’t we? And Jesy loves a piña colada, but without the rum.

★ Saving up for
Jesy Three houses – one for me, one for my mum and one for my dad.
Perrie A car. Even though I can’t drive, I would like one.

KATCHING MY I

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Sunday, 20 October 2013