Leigh-Anne Pinnock is a Scottish actress, singer and member of the extremely popular British girl band Little Mix. The band was formed in 2021 and quickly became the second group to win the X Factor Series in 2021. As with many other similar girl groups, their rise to fame came via massive social media exposure. Their video for their song titled “Choir” went viral in a very short period of time, going straight into the top twenty on YouTube. Shortly after this, the band were signed to Virgin Records and released a number of singles including” Wonderland” and “We Are Alpha”.
Although Little Mix has only released a handful of singles since their formation, there is a rather consistent fan base. Part of this is due to the girl’s charismatic singing abilities, and part of it is due to the steadily improving sound quality of their music. Many younger people tend to gravitate towards the softer sounds of newer artists such as Adele or Avril Lavigne. Leigh-Anne Pinnock, however, has performed exclusively with the four-piece band for the last couple of years, so her work receives a bit of a reputation amongst younger generations. This is unfortunate, seeing as she is one of the best female artists working in the music industry today. Here is some information about the life of Leigh-Anne Pinnock, the talented singer/songwriter behind the popular songs performed by Little Mix.
Pinnock grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she became very interested in performing art and writing. After becoming a member of the alternative pop group Pentatonic Youth, Pinnock relocated to London, UK where she joined the popular all-girl band named Sky. The band’s core members (Pinnock, Corin, Holly, and Ruby) formed the now-famous band Sky in the late 1990s. In 2021, however, the band was forced to split when Pinnock decided that she wanted a more serious career in songwriting. She signed to Parlophone Records and started working on new songs, which would eventually be recorded by Joanna Newsom and replaced some of the Sky material with new material that had a more dramatic effect.
Now that you know a little about the early life of Leigh-Anne Pinnock, let’s see what we can learn from her songs. One of the songs she performed with the Sky group was “Everything Tonight”, which showed us her vulnerability towards married men. In this song, she expresses her desire to leave her husband and go out with her friend. However, things don’t go as planned and she ends up breaking up with her lover. In an early interview, she spoke about how this song was written about how she felt like she was drowning in the sea of her marriage:
Another song from the early life of Leigh-Anne Pinnock, “Hindi”, tells the story of how her father took her brother away from home for the summer after they were abused by a member of their Indian community (Pinnock herself was an immigrant). In the lyrics, Pinnock tries to describe what it was like being away from home, even for just a summer. She describes her feelings of longing for her children: “I want them to remember what it was like when I was home/ spent every day at the beach… and every night…” Another section of the song is titled “every day, my darling, / I walk along the sands”. This describes how her life as a mother was very different from her life as a daughter: “every day I wake up / trying to find you, but I just can’t” – again, a clear description of the feeling that her children had whenever she was gone.
A later song, entitled “My Baby’s Eyes” describes the loss of her only child to death from cancer. The singer expresses her sorrow and regret at her loss, describing her desire for a child and the need to save some money to send her son off to college. The lyrics of this song additionally reveal the need to save money, as she is working hard to support her aging parents financially. On the subject of money, Leigh-Anne Pinnock additionally demonstrates her financial savvy as she realizes that she could use her inheritance to create a more secure financial future for her family: “If I die…my father will need to be paid, my mother will need to be fed, my brother… Well, there goes the nest of our nest. That’s nothing compared to what you’ve lost…”
