⭐⭐⭐⭐
This upbeat track is the third single to be released from the groups’ upcoming album, Confetti, scheduled for release on 6th November. This is the girls’ sixth studio album, and the message behind it remains quintessentially Little Mix with female empowerment and self-love being the main features.
On this track, the members, Jade Thirlwall, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Perrie Edwards and Jesy Nelson, sing about letting go of the ‘unrealistic expectations’ set for them and address the stigma surrounding the girl group.
“This type of music will continue to prevail.”
In the first verse of Not a Pop Song, Jade sings, “they look for picture-perfect/ don’t look deeper than the surface”. This lyric hints at how celebrities are continuously judged for their looks whilst their talent is disregarded. Perrie has candidly shared in the past that she picks herself apart when she sees paparazzi pictures of herself in a bikini; she is learning to love herself as she stated this year “for the first time, I didn’t cry, I didn’t pick myself apart”. As their vocals shine, they are instilling the message of self-love and acceptance into their fans.
Little Mix’s music has previously been criticised as having a ’bubblegum pop’ sound catering towards their younger fans. The lyric “bubblegum always pops” insinuates that they are embracing the stereotype because this type of music will continue to prevail.
The girls make a thinly veiled dig at Simon Cowell and his Syco Music record label; the lyrics read “I don’t do what Simon says/ Get the message cus it’s read”. This line is an inventive pun on the children’s game “Simon says” where participants mimic what one person does but only if the person mentions ‘Simon says…” before the instruction.
They left the Syco Music label in 2018 and signed with RCA Records. The reasoning for the aforementioned split has never been confirmed. However, it has been indicated that it was due to differences in opinion on the path the girls should take next.
Leigh-Anne sings in the pre-chorus “be a puppet on a string works for you, but that isn’t me”. This alludes to the way artists can be controlled by their management to maintain a specific image and sound. As the girls are maturing as women, they aim for their image to grow alongside them and not be a ‘puppet’ of their record label.
Not a Pop Song is a guitar-led single, and it is the perfect song to showcase Little Mix’s fresh new sound whilst creating a media frenzy over the subtle yet classy dig at their former boss.
Pia Cooper
Tweet to @cooper18_pia
Featured image courtesy of Thought Catalog on Unsplash. Image license can be found here. No changes were made to the image.
