Listen to Nelson tell her story, though, and it seems anything but a linear progression towards self-belief. I do believe as you get older you learn not to give a shit.” Now I’m genuinely in the best head space I’ve been, but back then I used to pretend I was. “That was at the beginning of Little Mix.” Did she really believe she was a tiger? She shakes her head. No, she says, actually it dates back to the earliest days. I assume it must be a recent tattoo about self-empowerment – a two-fingered salute to the haters. “Then I’ve got one on my leg that says ‘A tiger never loses sleep over the opinion of sheep.’ It basically means I couldn’t give a shit about what people think about me any more. “That’s the date we first got put together on The X Factor – 19 August 2011.” She moves down her body, pointing with a finger. Makeup: Heidi North at The Wall Group using Nars. Photographer’s assistants: Melinda Davies Z Perou. Rings: Swarovski, Mi Manera Jewelry, Acchitto. Shoes: Vivienne Westwood x Melissa, from Archivesix Studio. Jesy wears jacket and trousers: Guy O’Sport, from Ninetyfly. Astonishingly, she says she had only once sung publicly before The X Factor, when she was eight. Nelson attended the Sylvia Young theatre school, where she specialised in dance. Her parents separated when she was five, and the kids were brought up by her mother, Janis, a police community support officer. Nelson, 30, is the second youngest of four children who grew up in Essex. “That’s what I grew up with and what I always wanted to make, so now I am making it, it feels amazing.” The music I love is old school R&B and hip-hop.” Her new music reflects her own tastes. I loved what we did in Little Mix, but it wasn’t necessarily music I would listen to myself. She always had this little girl in her videos and I so wanted to be her. I would come home from school and the first thing I’d do is put on MTV Base and study Missy Elliott’s videos. Who were her heroes? “ Missy Elliott,” she says instantly. She has been obsessed with music and dancing since she was a little girl. On her upper arm it says, “Music is the strongest form of magic.” “It really is,” she says. O ur conversation starts with a guided tour of her many tattoos.
She had hit rock bottom today she explains just how bad it was. A month later, she announced she was leaving the group to look after her mental health. She missed a few public appearances and was absent from some sections of the video for Sweet Melody, released in November. It was horrible.” After Odd One Out aired, it seemed inevitable that Nelson’s days in the band were numbered. In the documentary, Thirlwall says: “We just had to watch this amazing funny person become like a broken doll. Over the years, the trolling intensified.
Little Mix on The X Factor in 2011, from left: Perrie Edwards, Jade Thirlwall, Jesy Nelson and Leigh-Anne Pinnock. “You think if everybody is saying it, it must be true.” The night Little Mix won The X Factor, Nelson, then 20, wept and wished she was back home with her mother. “When you’ve never had any issues with your face and then realise people are saying these things about you… ” She trails off. And the next one was, ‘God her face looks deformed,’” she tells me. “The first thing I read about myself was, ‘Is it me or does that girl look disabled?’ The next one said she really looks like a rat. But during the show, Nelson was trolled horrifically on social media. She was teamed up with other solo entrants – Leigh‑Anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall and Perrie Edwards – to form the girl group Rhythmix, which was later renamed Little Mix. She had auditioned successfully as a solo singer, but the judges decided she was better suited to being in a group.
#I say everybody everybody song series#
The origins of her low self-esteem went back to the very formation of the band on the 2011 series of The X Factor. She talked about how she had always compared herself with the other members of Little Mix and found herself wanting. In 2019, Nelson made a powerful documentary about her life with the “other three girls”, called Odd One Out. Every day, I’d type in ‘Jesy Nelson fat’ or ‘Jesy Nelson ugly’, and read what everyone said about me
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