Leigh-Anne — My Ego Told Me So

Feb 20

In recent years, the former members of the UK girl group Little Mix have each branched out into solo output. The latest project to come from these ventures is My Ego Told Me To, the debut LP by Leigh-Anne. The album, released on February 20th via Virgin Music Group, features lots of energy and a decent bit of variety, but doesn’t deliver anything particularly spectacular.

To start with the positives – My Ego Told Me To features a few songs with some compelling genre mixes. A lot of the record blends together a variety of grooves and rhythms quite seamlessly, from Afrobeats and R&B to even reggae. Leigh-Anne feels perfectly at home throughout, demonstrating an admirable versatility in her deliveries and cadences. Her vocal performances throughout the record are another major highlight — her voice is powerful and well-defined, and she has a great deal of charisma and personality as a performer, particularly on tracks like “Been A Minute”, “Goodbye Goodmorning” and “Dead and Gone”. Her lyricism, while not complex, is, much like her vocals, self-assured and confident, complimenting the energy of the project very well.

The main issue with My Ego Told Me So is that it feels a bit dated in a lot of places. Some of the instrumentation and production, while very well-executed, feels as though it wouldn’t have been out of place a decade ago, in the Rita Ora age of dance-pop. It feels like, while Leigh-Anne and her collaborators took a few steps in a more experimental direction, they ultimately didn’t go all the way and decided to be more cautious and risk-averse in a lot of instances that, if approached with a little more bravery, could’ve put this album over the edge from being decent into being great.

Another, albeit smaller flaw is that not every track feels totally necessary. Some tracks seem as though they could’ve either been left on the cutting room floor or had some more work done on them before making the final version of the LP. The fifteen-track album feels as though it probably could’ve been condensed to 11-12 songs, with the softer, almost ballad-like “Me Minus U” as the closer.

In conclusion, when compared to records by her former Little Mix colleagues, Leigh-Anne delivers a far more interesting product than Perrie, but falls somewhat short of the artistic bravery of Jade. “My Ego Told Me So” is a record that is confident, fun, danceable and very magnetic in its charm; however, it does feel a little safe and behind the times in some places, and could’ve used a few cuts. As far as solo debuts go, it’s a decently strong project, and shows that, while there’s still work to do, Leigh-Anne definitely has a good base as her own artist.

6.5/10

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