Why Little Mix are the artists we need now
Little Mix O2 Arena
Six years have passed since Little Mix became the only girl group to win The X Factor, but only during the past 12 months have they been allowed to emerge as women in the public eye.
Jesy Nelson, Perrie Edwards, Jade Thirlwall and Leigh-anne Pinnock – collective age: 100 – wrote a fair chunk of Glory Days, their chart-topping fourth album, from the embittered experience of heartbreak. After nudging at their burgeoning maturity on the previous record, Get Weird, Little Mix presented their newfound womanhood unabashedly with Glory Days’ release; no mean feat for a band whose fan base were traditionally so young they’d been giving matinee shows during the six-month-long world tour.
The last tour that Little Mix brought to the O2 was in support of Get Weird, and they cheerily carried the confused trappings of an arena show designed to keep what by now was a broader spectrum of their fans entertained. They straddled leopardprint thrones but larked about in cheesy filmed segments that imagined an alternative universe.
The Glory Days tour, which ended at the O2 on Sunday, has been a far more defined – and refined – affair, punctuated by stall-shuddering beats and assured, monochrome styling. A carefully curated set list of clever arrangements has rewarded fans with back-catalogue cuts as they’ve never heard them before, spliced enticingly between new hits. Months on the road have kneaded musical slickness into Little Mix’s effusive energy: they can roll their hips and flick their hair with the best of ’em, but their octavescaling harmonies don’t suffer.
Little Mix’s brazen sexuality has been honed against a turbulent pop-culture backdrop. Film, comedy and TV may have been shaken by the quakes of #metoo, but pop music’s greatest stars have shared their tragic experiences of assault through music and action rather than testimony. Taylor Swift won a symbolic dollar in a groping case in August, Lady Gaga announced her rape survival in song last October, and Kesha addressed her personal turmoil in the most redemptive, scorched-earth comeback album of the decade.
Little Mix have always championed female and LGBTQ empowerment – just look at Wings, the believe-inyourself single released weeks after their X Factor victory – but songs such as Salute, in which they call for girls to join them in fighting what restrains them, felt even more viral in this new, raw landscape.
They opened with Power, their latest number one and, like much on Glory Days, a song that more than hints at their sexual proclivities. But performing it here, even in their trademark bodysuits, Little Mix showed that Power is about far more than a bedroom boast. It was exactly the kind of assertive, healing pop performance that we need now.