Just before the release of their album LM5 in November 2018, fans were shook when British girl band Little Mix decided to leave Simon Cowell‘s Syco record label after an alleged falling out with management. Now, over a year later, Perrie Edwards, Jade Thirlwall, Jesy Nelson and Leigh-Anne Pinnock have opened up about switching labels during their album release.

“We had a switch of labels during the LM5 process and that really f**ked us over,” bandmember Jade admitted during an interview. “It was harder to put all our creativity out there in the way we would have liked. The LM5 album was very heavily on women’s rights and our experiences in the industry.”

For those who don’t know, after they left Syco, the group signed to RCA Records — another imprint under the Sony Music umbrella. Now, the songstress said, the girls are “in a good place” and can’t wait to release their forthcoming sixth album.

“We’ve learned to really stick to our guns and do what we believe in,” Jade said, with Leigh-Anne adding, “We’re definitely back on track with everything. We’ve got a new album and a new single coming. It’s so exciting. We’ve actually done quite a lot of the album already. It’s one of our favorites.”

As fans know, after Little Mix left Simon’s record label, the 60-year-old music executive decided to premiere a new competition show, called X Factor The Band, in an attempt to find a new girl group and boy band. Prior to his announcement, the former X Factor contestants took to Instagram to and announced their own new TV series, called The Search, where Perrie, Jesy, Leigh-Anne and Jade would be creating and mentoring new bands too.

When Simon talked to The Sun about his upcoming series, he revealed that he was initially asked to co-produce the girls’ upcoming series, but he actually came up with the idea for the series himself.

“This is what really happened,” he said. “I was approached to co-produce that show last year by Little Mix’s management. I told them the problem was we have a conflict of interest because we are launching X Factor The Band in 2020. We were told their show was going to launch in 2021. Then we had the fallout and find out Little Mix were bringing their show forward. Was that intentional because we are doing our show? I have no idea. But regardless, it was too much fun not to do this year. I would rather it was us doing it first.”

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