INTERVIEW: Perrie releases self-titled debut album: "This has been what I've been working towards, this is what I've wanted more than anything."

Interview: Shalane Connors
Published: 26 September 2025

Perhaps not surprisingly for one of the greatest pop bands of their generation, Little Mix has in turn produced some of the greatest solo artists of the 2020s. Today, Perrie Edwards, who performs under just her first name, is the next Little Mix member to mark a momentous achievement in her own artistry with the release of her debut album Perrie.

After releasing her UK top 10 debut solo single ‘What About Us’, co-written by Ed Sheeran and Dave Hodges of Evanescence, last April, Edwards released a slew of singles before coming to a realisation that her music was not going in the direction she wanted, leading her to pause her career and push back the release of her album.

"At the end of last year I was feeling so much pressure to release music and move quickly. I wasn't happy and didn't feel like the music I was releasing was right,” Edwards says. “During one of my therapy sessions, my therapist said if you're not happy just take away that pressure and stop for a bit. She was right and I decided to press pause on my music.”

Edwards took everything back to the beginning and headed to her home studio and reworked the album, writing new songs, changing some old songs until she had created a collection of music she was really happy with.

“I went back in the studio and spent time writing songs that were totally authentic to me and about subjects that were close to my heart, without the pressure of having to hit a release date. I absolutely love the album I have created and I'm really proud of it. This is the music I want to make and I'm super excited to release it to the world.”

While the music Edwards had released last year was pop perfection - from the 1970s infused funk of ‘Tears’ to the storming dance pop brilliance of ‘You Go Your Way’, included on Perrie, - the extra care, polish and detail she dedicated to the album rework is evident throughout every track. There is an elevated sound, and an undeniable charm, to every song on the album with Edwards’ remarkable voice sounding stronger and more compelling than ever.

Edwards worked with a number of major artists on the album, including fellow singer-songwriters Nina Nesbitt, MNEK and Ed Drewett, and the soundscape is a diverse reflection on all the music that has influenced and made up who Edwards is an artist. From rock to disco to synthpop to country to power ballads, there is a story and a moment for every mood, tied together by Perrie’s own personal stories and powerhouse voice.

Recent single ‘If He Wanted To He Would’ blends elements of country music with a thumping rock-pop beat and is sung from the perspective of a best friend who can see the relationship you are in isn’t really a good one - ‘I hate to tell you but he ain’t gonna change…you’re only blinded cause the sex is kinda good’.

‘Pushing Up Daisies’ follows the path of ‘You Go Your Way’ into glistening pop anthem territory, with a pared back verse that explodes into a glorious 1980s synth chorus with the type of beat that permeates right into your pop soul.

In a similar vein, but leaning more into a 1960s style sound, ‘Cute Aggression’ is delightfully off kilter with Edwards almost gleefully letting her inner stalker out as she declares to her love interest ‘you’ll never know how much I love you til my crazy comes out’ before chirpily repeating ‘I’m sorry but you’re mine now’. It’s a brilliantly produced song that successfully ties a quirky, light hearted story with melodies, harmonies and music crafted with sheer genius.

Perrie is just as successful with the heartfelt moments as it is with the upbeat tunes. Latest single ‘Miss You’ is a stunningly beautiful piano ballad, with Edwards’ vocal depth and range on full display as she sings of a relationship that has ended, but there is still regret at how the good times went so bad. ‘I don’t miss the pain or the man you’ve become…I guess the memory of you is what I miss tonight.

‘Same Place Different View’ is another emotional driven, piano and vocal ballad that looks at the confusion of a relationship that is drifting apart. It leads into ‘You Go Your Way’, while sonically polar opposites continues the story of a couple decide to go their own way, confident they will eventually find their way back to each other.

Perrie is a gem of an album and is perhaps proof that sticking to your creative guns, even if it means stopping everything to go back and start over again, is the only way to make music that truly resonates. Edwards has never sounded more assured, confident and authentic and with a platform that allows her music to fully reflect only her voice and story, there is a sense we are really getting to know Edwards the person and artist on a much deeper level. Perrie may be Edwards’ first solo album, but based on its quality it is surely just the beginning of many years of brilliant music from her. We recently caught up with Edwards to chat all about the creation of the album.

Hello Perrie! First of all, congratulations on your debut album release. It's 15 tracks long, which is enormous, it's super autobiographical and very eclectic. Is it 80s pop? Is it country? It's all of the things, and I love it. Tell me more.
Thank you! I think it's just all my favourite influences in one but still just makes so much sense as a body of work. I just love pop music so much, especially that big stadium pop sound. Live guitars, making it band driven so it's got that kind of rockiness to it. And country just seems to have been a thread throughout my music without me even realising, I don't know why. I think just the way I write, or the way I do my lyrics or melodies just has a country influence. It's just a good first album, because it's very me. It's very authentic, it's autobiographical, like you said. I just love it so much, I'm so proud of it.

You only launched your solo music career last year, and from the outside, it looks like things are moving super quickly for you, but you've actually spoken about taking a break and the importance of taking time out from your music. Talk me through that.
I just got to the point where it wasn't feeling fun anymore. And I know work’s not always supposed to be peachy and great and smooth sailing, you have it in every industry you're in. Things don’t always go to plan. But I think for me, because I'm doing music, music comes from your emotion, it comes from your feeling, it comes from a vibe. Music is so powerful because it brings out emotions in people, and it takes you back to a time in your life and all these different things. I felt like I was having the fun taken out of everything, and it wasn't fun, it wasn't enjoyable, and I couldn't access that creative part of my brain, because I just felt so much pressure.

Taking your foot off the gas in this industry is a scary thing to do, because if you're not constantly out there and constantly putting yourself forward, you can be forgotten about, or be told you're not working hard enough. All these different things come into play. But I'm really glad I did have a bit of time to myself to figure things out, because when I came back in the new year, I felt like I was itching to go again, and I wanted to be in the studio, and I wanted to make music again. The creative juices were just flowing a lot better. So I'm glad I did it. It was definitely worth it, because now I feel like I have an album that I'm so proud of and that I just flipping love!

You actually went back and reworked a bunch of tracks that were previously in the mix for the album, didn’t you?
Yeah, I think there was only like three or four maybe that made it from the original album to what it is now. And with the the original album, let's say it was 14 songs. Out of those 14 songs, I brought maybe three and it just didn't feel exciting and rewarding to me. I felt like I was just putting music out that was great and I loved it, but it wasn't me and it wasn't what I wanted the album to be like. Now I am happy that I've got an album where the majority of the songs have been written by me. There's not that many songs that I've taken from outside songwriters, so I think that's a better place to be in. I'm just more excited about it, because it feels more real

So there's actually less writing collaboration in this than your previous work.
Yeah, I just got to a place where I was like, it doesn't feel right. I don't know, I feel like your intuition and your gut is so strong, and it was speaking to me, if not shouting to me, ‘this, isn't it! It should feel different’. I started working with new people in the new year, the producers The Nocturnes, Nina Nesbitt who is a songwriter and an artist herself, Maegan Cottone , who I worked with a lot in Little Mix but we never seem to really cross paths the first time around. I was like why have I not worked with Meg when she knows me more than anybody and we get on so well? We did ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘Absofuckinglutely’ together, we just have fun, and I think we're both very similar. We love the dramatics of things, and we take the piss a little bit, but in a good way.

‘Bonnie and Clyde’ is very dramatic. ‘I'd kill someone and bury the gun…my heart is breaking because you wouldn't do the same thing’!
It's so dramatic. I was in the room with Meg and Tom Mann, who's an incredible songwriter as well, and I said, I could write a love song about [partner] Alex any day of the week, and it'd be just this beautiful song - I love you, you're so great, la, la. But I'm sometimes psychotic, I love him so fucking much, that sometimes I think, is this normal, and does he feel the same way? Obviously, yes, it's very dramatic. I wouldn't kill somebody, but in the song, I would do all these things for you, and I love you so much, and I'm actually, in fact, infatuated by you. Would you do the same for me? I know you love me, but is it the same? I don't know. So that was kind of the concept and the inspiration for that song. I wanted it to sound dramatic and over the top and then obviously the middle eight comes in and the guitars come thrashing in, and it just sounds like ahh!

‘Cute Aggression’ has a similar theme as well.
Cute aggression is such a thing in my life. I get it with babies, I get it with puppies, I get it with Alex. When I see something cute. I just want to squish it! So I thought that was a really fun, cute concept for a song.

Speaking of babies, I hear this album is not the only baby you're about to deliver into the world?
Yes! I have the birth of my album and the birth of my child coming and I can't believe it's all fallen at the same time. It's wild. Obviously it wasn't planned, but I feel like it's worked out to be good, because I can promote the album, I can work my ass off, get the album out there, and then the industry kind of switches off at Christmas and January. So really, the timing works out perfectly. I'm excited, I love a challenge!

I’m so lucky, I've got my mum here and you know, when people say it takes a village, I say it takes a Debs [her mother]. Debs is my everything. She does everything for me, everything with me. She looks after [my son] Axel, I don't have a nanny or anything like that. She's basically my everything. So we just run this world together, I love her, she's the best,

We mentioned the album is super eclectic. I'm interested to know who your stand out women in the industry were when you were growing up and just starting out as a singer?
My favourite artist when I was growing up was Anastacia, I just loved Anastacia so much, and also Alanis Morissette. I loved the women that were just really badass in the industry who didn't give a shit what they were saying and were unapologetically themselves, they just came at you. I love that about women in the industry. Quite recently, I got to meet Anastacia, and we exchanged numbers, and she's like, ‘I'm your big sis, and I'm gonna guide you through this’ and she was helping me plan my wedding and all this stuff. She's so lovely, and I love hanging out with her, but if younger Perrie knew that I was hanging out with Anastacia and she was talking about my wedding and we were having good girly chats and stuff, she would freak the hell out! It’s funny how it’s gone full circle. I also love all the divas, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera. Britney Spears was a huge one for me as well, I fucking loved Britney. Lots of different women have inspired me.

Your recent single ‘Miss You’ has very Beyoncé vibes for me.
Oh, I'll take that! Compare anything to Beyonce, and I'm freaking sold! Iit's very over the top, old school ballad with the orchestra, and it builds, and it's huge, and it's slaps you in the face. And that's kind of what I wanted for a big ballad moment on the album.

You're a massive advocate for therapy in your public life, and I wanted to ask do you see songwriting as a form of therapy?
Oh, gosh, yes, I love it. I think it's so nice being in a room with people and just baring it all, just letting your soul out and not holding anything back. Just laying everything out is so refreshing and so nice. It's a unspoken rule in the industry that when you're in a session with people, you can tell them your deepest darkest secrets, and it never comes out.

You can access so much creativity from stories or life experiences, or things that have happened in your past that have made you who you are now, and even things that the other people in the room are going through. The start of any session, nine times out of ten, is just talking about life and talking about things, and you then kind of just pull all of the inspiration from that.

I love therapy. It's definitely helped me. I've had it for years and years and never really found the benefits of it, and didn't quite understand how therapy was supposed to help until I found the right therapist. And then I was like, right now, I get it, this is it. People say it's like speed dating, you don't necessarily find your forever person who you click with and your soul mate straight away. It's the same with therapists, you've got to try different ones to find who fits you and how they help.

Song writing is therapy, but you also get to play the therapist by putting your songs out there for people to connect with.
Absolutely, that's so true. Sometimes talking about your own experiences, whether good or bad, just helps other people anyway, because they feel like they're seen and they feel like they're heard and less isolated.

One of my favourite questions to ask is, was there a sliding doors moment for you, an alternate career path you might have taken when you were younger?
I don't think so. I think I was just always destined to sing. I'm not very good at anything else. Growing up, I loved children, I loved animals, so I wanted to maybe do something in that kind of world. I did work experience at my primary school, and I loved it so much, it was so cute. I wanted to be a vet for a long time, because I love animals so much, but my true calling was always singing. I just sucked at everything else! So lucky that I was singing, because otherwise I'd be in trouble!

Did you really suck at everything else, or is that an exaggeration?
No. I'm not academically bright. I did not pass maths, English, any of that stuff. English I was good at because it's poetry and writing and lyrics and things like that, that I was good at, but everything else, I failed quite bad actually!

Do you have a favourite track on your album, or a track that you think will resonate the most with people?
Oh, I think ‘Same Place, Different View’ will touch a lot of people. We speak about relationships breaking up a lot in music, and heartbreak and going through different things like that, but it's very rare we talk about friendships breaking down. And for a lot of people their friends are their everything, and when you haven't got that friendship dynamic anymore, it is a heartbreak, and it is a loss. It is absolutely horrendous and not very nice to navigate. So I think that song will touch a lot of people. With the fun, upbeat ones, ‘Sand Dancer’, about my upbringing, is very authentic and autobiographical. ‘Absofuckinglutely’ is such a tune, I love it so much. ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ will probably go down well with people that love that moody, Radiohead ‘Creep’ kind of vibe. Honestly, all of them, but for different reasons. I can't choose! I love them all so much.

What are you most excited about with the album coming out?
That it's coming out! I'm so excited, I'm so relieved. I feel like I've worked for this moment for so long, this has been what I've been working towards, this is what I've wanted more than anything, is my album coming out. So I actually just feel genuinely relieved and ecstatic that it's coming out, it's going to be in the world, and it's done.

It's super reflective, and I think it's easy to fall into that feeling of living in the past with a lot of music, but your album also has a great sense of moving forward, which I love. It's like living in these two worlds at the same time.
Yeah, I love that. It’s got those sad songs, and then there's just that euphoria of being powerful and strong and moving through it and getting out the other end. So I'm glad you thought that.

Perrie is out now via Sony Music. You can buy and stream here.
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