My Ego Told Me To

For all the brash bravado of its title, My Ego Told Me To, the debut solo album from Leigh-Anne has a surprisingly tender meaning at its heart. “It’s been a bit rocky, my solo journey so far,” she tells Apple Music. The pop singer-songwriter, who cut her artistic teeth in one of Britain’s most successful girl bands, Little Mix, signed a major-label record deal and released her first solo single, “Don’t Say Love”, in 2023, a year after the group went on extended hiatus. Creative tensions between Leigh-Anne and her label had already arisen, even at this early stage. “I was really sort of bumping heads with them and they weren’t seeing my vision,” she says. “I went a whole year without releasing a song because there was so much back and forth.” They parted ways in 2025. A timely studio session with “dream team” producer/songwriters Clarence Coffee Jr (Beyoncé, Dua Lipa) and Owen Cutts (Stormzy, Clean Bandit) provided an outlet for her frustrations around this period, resulting in the blistering defiance of the album’s opening run of tracks: “Look into My Eyes”, “Dead and Gone” and “Revival”. Writing those songs, their lilting island vibes toughened up with thumping percussion, reawakened a sense of self she had long suppressed. “[My ego] is based on my younger self,” says Leigh-Anne. “She went into The X Factor, dyed her hair red and she had so much fearlessness and boldness. She just knew who she was. I looked back at the treatment that I faced with my previous label and I just thought: ‘She would have stood up for herself!’ So I needed to bring her back.” Leigh-Anne’s ego, it turns out, has great musical instincts. The album it has pushed her into creating as a fully independent artist is a fresh, cohesive spin on the pop sounds that have formed the foundations of her career, exploring new vocal textures and incorporating elements of reggae, dancehall, Afrobeat, R&B and more. Among the strongest moments: “Goodbye Goodmorning”, an electrifying ode to a lover she can