Album Review: My Ego Told Me To by Leigh-Anne
On her first record without Little Mix, Leigh-Anne Pinnock proves she can write about dread and domesticity with real specificity, even when the flirt tracks surrounding those moments blur together.
Warner said they lacked the budget. Leigh-Anne Pinnock left, signed with Virgin Music Group, and assembled the debut herself, nearly four years after Little Mix’s final Confetti Tour date and a full season after both JADE and Perrie put their solo records into the world. The scrappiest origin story of the three, and the most uneven album.
Leigh-Anne’s voice has always been the sturdiest instrument in Little Mix, the one that anchored the group’s harmonies without calling attention to itself. Solo, that sturdiness becomes a problem and an asset in equal measure. Her mezzo sits in a warm middle register that carries melody with zero apparent effort, and across fifteen tracks, she never cracks, never strains, never oversings. When Leigh-Anne sings, “Take the lead, I’ll follow/If you ready, let me know” on “Been a Minute,” the vocal is so clean that the emptiness of the lyric has nowhere to hide. Something breaks open around the third minute of “Best Version of Me.” The verse has already named running from herself, and the pre-chorus has been stacking admissions one on top of another, each shorter and more blunt than the previous one. Then the line that cracks the whole song wide: “Living my dream in a nightmare/Feel imprisoned in my head.”
When patois enters, Leigh-Anne’s entire body shifts. Her phrasing loosens, her syllables ride slightly behind the beat rather than pinning themselves to it, and the writing quits reaching for pop-universal language. “Dead and Gone” buries a former self over a reggae pulse. The bridge code-switches without flagging it: “For who God bless, no one can ever curse.” On “Tight Up Skirt,” she opens in Spanish-language ad-libs and the riddim takes over, “whine me, whine me, take me, take me” rolling off her like yard choreography. “Most Wanted,” produced by Rvssian with Jamaican artist Valiant guesting, thrives because Valiant’s grain collides with hers. In Standard British Pop mode, Leigh-Anne sounds capable. In this register, she sounds rooted.
My Ego Told Me To keeps arguing with itself about how honest it wants to be. “Revival” curses out someone she can identify by name.
“Fake ass, you was never ever that real
Never ever, ever give a shit about how you feel
One minute it’s a promise, then they break the deal.”
Given the Warner split, the addressee is obvious. Two tracks later, “Free” swings at the same grievance. Sure, her singing, “Nothing’s gonna keep me in the dark, I’ma reach the stars,” could belong to any empowerment playlist on earth, but given the context of what she’s been through, she deserves it all. “Goodbye Goodmorning” admits the embarrassment of staying in a cycle she keeps announcing she’ll break (“How we fight all day, make love all night/Then we wake up like it’s all alright”), and the bridge daisy-chains the mess into playground logic: “The fightin’ turn to kissin’/And the kissin’ turn to missin’.” That kind of plain, looping confession sits three tracks away from “Burning Up,” which wraps the same relationship heat in “you be the flame, and I’ll be the lighter” and says nothing about what it actually costs.
Every other song on this album is aimed at somebody. The flirt tracks talk to a lover or a dance floor. “Heaven” is the only track where Leigh-Anne isn’t performing for an audience at all.
“Tryna find time in my schedule
Need a quick break, yeah, I gotta breathe
My baby went and got me this ring
Do it for my babies, they my everything.”
After fourteen tracks of grinding and spiraling and showing off, a woman saying her kids make her feel invincible and meaning it plainly is the most disarming thing here. It is someone confirming, to herself, in a room that might as well be empty, that the ordinary facts of her life are sufficient. Invest in Leigh-Anne’s stock now.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Dead and Gone,” “Best Version of Me,” “Heaven”