Little Mix shocked the Pop landscape when they split from their label just one week before the release of their fifth album ‘LM5.’
At the time, the reason reported centered around songwriting credits and a broader breakdown between the group’s management (Modest) and Simon Cowell‘s Syco imprint.
Now, the industry honcho is speaking up and out about the matter. In trademark form, he didn’t hold back either.
His words below…
In an interview with a notable UK newspaper, the mogul said:
“It was just embarrassing but, funnily enough, I was more annoyed, again, not about me, but about the fact people who had worked so hard in my company were being misrepresented. Why do artists think they’re more important than staff members? They’re not. They’re the same.
The irony was the record they were arguing about, which is Woman Like Me, they didn’t want to record. This was one of those ironic times that we were having a hit and nobody was happy.
It wasn’t down to money. Basically, they said we’d done a terrible job. I had agreed not to talk about this publicly because I thought it was a private matter. I said, ‘We can’t work with the management, it’s as simple as that’.”
The X Factor creator went on to add that he’d be meeting the group later this week “just so they can hear it from me and I can hear it from them.”
He went on to say:
“Everyone’s like, ‘There must have been something massive and that’s why it collapsed’. Well, I can show you all the correspondence between me and the girls over the years, there’s never been an instance when we’ve fallen out. As I said in my email to them, I stand by the fact they are the hardest working bunch of girls I’ve ever worked with. They deserve everything they’ve got.”
With the group being far and away the biggest active act on the Syco roster, Cowell is reported to be meeting with staff from at his label all-week to map out the future. A future that now doesn’t include the Pop quad. As confirmed, Perrie, Jesy, Jade, and Leigh-Anne are now signed to fellow Sony label RCA UK.
*************
By music industry standards, this still remains such a shocking story. Indeed, it reads more like an ‘Empire’ storyline – in that moves like this rarely happen at such pivotal times.
In any case, it’ll be all sorts of interesting to see how things fare for Little Mix moving forward. And Syco too. Once home to One Direction, Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke, and more, it’s most certainly the dawn of a new day.