The painful story Perrie Edwards never planned to share.

If Perrie Edwards had gotten her way, she never would have become quite this famous.

The 32-year-old singer first found fame with Little Mix, the first band to win The X Factor UK back in 2011, who, during their more than a decade-long career, sold over 75 million records worldwide, establishing themselves as one of the best-selling girl groups in history.

This week, the musician launched her long-awaited debut solo album Perrie, an album that includes the banger 'Forget About Us', the song that launched her solo music career and went on to have over 51 million streams to date.

Yet when it came to the fateful day of her first The X Factor audition, 17-year-old Perrie initially refused to get out of bed.

"I always pictured singing because I knew that was my thing, but I didn't think I'd get this lucky in life," Perrie said on Mamamia's podcast No Filter.

"I wasn't the type to be in the school plays and audition for things; that kind of thing used to terrify me. I didn't really start singing publicly till I was about 15.

"I remember being really embarrassed heading to the X Factor auditions, and the whole time I was thinking, 'what if my friends see me? It's just embarrassing.

"My mum said it wasn't embarrassing, and she woke me up in the middle of the night and drove me to Glasgow because the Newcastle auditions had just been cancelled. So, lo and behold, she comes in, pulls me out of bed, and off we go to Glasgow.

"I rang my mum from The X Factor boot camp, crying my eyes out every day and asking her to please pick me up. I hated it there. My mum told me to stay and said if you're lucky, you'll get put in a group, because I was so painfully shy.

"I'm grateful for my mum pushing me into it; she could see the talent, and she just wanted me to succeed."

Listen to the full interview with Perrie Edwards on No Filter.

Little Mix, the group she was placed in, went on to release some of the most iconic pop songs of the last decade, with Wings, Black Magic, Shout Out To My Ex, and Power all soaring up the charts.

Black Magic became the first music video by a British girl group to surpass one billion streams on YouTube and was ranked by Billboard as one of the "Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time".

Little Mix went to break a slew of records during their career, including becoming the first girl group to spend over 100 weeks inside the top ten of the UK Singles Chart, the first to accumulate six top five entries on the UK Albums Chart, and hold the record for the highest chart entry for a debut album by a UK girl group on the US Billboard 200.

In 2021, Little Mix made history by becoming the first girl group to win the coveted award for Best British Group at the prestigious BRIT Awards.

For Perrie, her first real taste of the spoils of fame didn't come via a stadium of screaming fans or a stylist dressing her in couture gowns for a walk down the red carpet; instead, it took place on a random street surrounded by her family.

"We did an advertisement on X Factor during the very early days of the show. That was just before we won, and we actually got paid for those things," she told No Filter.

"I went to the cash point with my mum and brother, and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, there's so much money in my account! I came from humble beginnings, so I'd never seen that much money before in an account, and I was freaking out with my mum and brother out in the street.

Then I remember going straight to the Apple Store and just buying my whole family laptops."

After winning The X Factor, Little Mix went on to break records. Image: Getty.

During the early days of her career with Little Mix, Perrie in particular became a lightning rod for tabloid attention and fan fascination, thanks to her relationship with fellow musician Zayn Malik.

The couple fell in love during the height of their Little Mix and One Direction days, staying together for four years and having a two-year-long engagement before breaking up in 2015. In Little Mix's One World book, Perrie wrote that Malik ended their relationship via text message.

"It was horrible, the worst time in my life," she wrote. "A four-year relationship, two-year engagement ended by a simple text message. Just like that." (Zayn has since denied that's how the relationship ended).

In 2016, Perrie met and fell in love with professional footballer Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and the couple welcomed their first child together in 2021, a son named Axel.

While their love story reads like a fairy tale on paper, Perrie said that her past relationships had made it difficult for her to believe that Alex was there for the long haul. A feeling chronicled in a song on her debut album titled You Go Your Way.

"It was a very shallow pool on Raya back then," she said, referencing the exclusive dating app where she matched with Alex. "We started chatting and exchanged numbers, and then nothing really came about.

"Then I was watching Gogglebox and the England team were on it. I said 'Oh, my God, that's that guy that I was talking to!'. (Little Mix bandmate) Jesy made me message him, so I wrote 'hi, when are you taking me out?'

"I dated a lot before that, but everybody just gave me the ick," she continued. "I couldn't be bothered with anybody, to be honest, I'd rather just be on my own. But then I met him, and I just thought, Oh, my God, he's perfect. He's everything that I wanted to meet.

"I think I needed somebody like him to come into my life, to change my opinion on men, especially. I just fancied him straight away.

"This song, You Go Your Way, made me think back to a time when Alex and I first started dating, and we were catching feelings, but neither of us had said anything.

"I was going to America to do the Ariana Grande tour and I just remember sitting him down after a date one night and saying, 'Look, I'm going to be away for three months, and I don't expect you to wait for me. So why don't we just go our separate ways for now, and if we're meant to be, then maybe we'll come back together.

"He was horrified and asked why we would do that. We were both quite young at the time, and I didn't want to put that pressure on him. He then said, 'Absolutely not, you're my girlfriend and I don't want to do that'. Then we just Skyped every day and messaged constantly."

Perrie said that being a mother to four-year-old Axel has impacted her life in the best way possible. In September of this year, Perrie shared a video on her Instagram account announcing that she and Alex were expecting their second child.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Perrie Edwards. Image: Getty

This year, Perrie also shared for the first time that she had suffered multiple miscarriages in the past, saying that she had gone through a miscarriage before giving birth to Axel and later lost a baby at 24 weeks, describing the moment the doctor confirmed the heartbreaking news as the worst day of her life.

Speaking to No Filter, Perrie spoke about living a life in the spotlight while suffering through these traumatic events, saying these were stories she had never planned to make public.

"I never intentionally wanted to go public with that," she said, talking about the stories she first shared on the We Need To Talk podcast.

"It happened a few years ago, and we've kind of kept it just within our circles, just my best friends and family knew. Then I did the podcast, and it was almost like a therapy session. I didn't think of it as 'this is the time to go public'. It just came out.

"It felt like a natural kind of way to do it, but I didn't think I would ever discuss things like that," she continued. "Not because I didn't want to raise awareness for it. I know so many people have gone through it, so many women and friends of mine, and it's really hard.

"The only reason I didn't want to discuss it was because I found it too difficult to discuss, so I thought I was just never going to talk about it, I was just going to keep it in, and that'd be that. But the response to me sharing this has been wild. I'm grateful that it's out there and it's helping people, and people can find some peace in it, because it's really hard, it's awful."

In the lead-up to the release of her debut solo album, Perrie shared that she felt compelled to make a risky decision at the height of the album's creation. In 2024, she decided to pause her solo music career and rethink the direction of her music.

"When you come from a successful group, everyone has such expectations of you," she said. "You're not a new artist anymore so when you go solo, if you're not doing what people thought or wanted or hoped you would do, it's almost like they just shit all over it. So it's kind of stressful.

"I got to the point making this album where I didn't feel like I was being truly authentic to myself. I wasn't writing the material; it wasn't coming from me, so it didn't feel that genuine. So I put the brakes on, then went back to the studio with a fresh head. I'm glad I stuck to my guns, and now my album is so me.

Perrie will be released on September 26th.

Feature image: Getty.