Jesy Nelson has revealed the “breaking point” that made her decide to quit Little Mix.
The 29-year-old announced her departure from the popular band in December, nine years after the band was formed on The X Factor.
In a statement at the time, the singer admitted being in the group was taking a toll on her mental health, and said she felt “constant pressure” to live up to expectations.
In her first solo magazine cover, Jesy spoke to Cosmopolitan about her decision to leave the band, explaining: “The last music video we did [Sweet Melody] was the breaking point.”
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“We’d been in lockdown, and [that had been] the first time I could have a break and be at home around people that I love. It was the happiest I’d ever felt, and I didn’t realize that until I went back to work.”
“I immediately became a different person. I had anxiety. Whenever we had a music video, I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself to try and lose weight,” she admitted.
“I have a fear of looking back on the camera. If I don’t like what I see, I find it so hard to be in front of the camera and feel amazing and perform.”
After going on an “extreme diet” in the lead-up to the music video, Jesy revealed she had a panic attack on the day of the shoot.
“On the day of the ‘Sweet Melody’ video I had a panic attack on set because I didn’t look how I wanted to look and I found it so hard to just be happy and enjoy myself. I looked at the other three and they were having the time of their life,” she recalled.
“I get so jealous, because I want to feel like that and enjoy it, because music is my passion. To have this dream and not be enjoying it because of what I look like, I knew wasn’t normal.”
Jesy revealed she was missing from a scene in the music video because that was when she “broke down”.
“I was like, ‘I just want to go home.’ I was sobbing in the dressing room. Someone really close to me said, ‘This has got to stop. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. You’re going to end up where you were before.'”
Jesy admitted she entered “a really dark time after the music video”, and was advised by her mother to put her mental health first.
“For me, that was the pinnacle point. I was like, ‘I need to start taking care of myself now, because this isn’t healthy.’ It wasn’t nice for the other three to be around someone who didn’t want to be there. So I took a break.”
“For so long I worried about other people and letting people down. The only person I should have been trying to make happy was myself and I wasn’t doing that.”
“I needed to do it for my mental health because I know I would have ended up back where I was five years ago, and that’s scary…”
Opening up about her decision to pursue a solo music career, Jesy said: “I never said when I put out my statement that I was coming out of the band to never be in the public eye or perform again, or do music.”
“I said I was coming out of the band because I genuinely couldn’t deal with the pressure of being in a girl band.”
The news comes after Jesy’s former bandmates Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Perrie Edwards revealed they “learned to adapt” as a trio.
Little Mix released the music video for Confetti last week, their first music video as a trio.
