Perrie Louise Edwards (born July 10, 1993) is a member of the British girl group Little Mix along with Jesy Nelson, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall.
She began dating UK singer and former One Direction band member Zayn Malik in May 2012. The couple got engaged in August 2013 but broke up in August 2015.
Early life
Perrie Louise Edwards, was born in the neighborhood of South Shields in Tyne and Wear, England, UK. Born to mother Debbie Duffie and father Alexander Edwards, she has an older brother, Jonnie. Her parents are both singers. Her dad Alex is in an unsigned band called Alexander’s Palace. Her mum Debbie was a singer. She didn’t have any singing ambitions until fairly recently. She said: "I thought I was just a normal singer. I did a few shows at school but was always at the back. I never had the confidence to do it well. Now, with these girls, everything is working." Before entering The X Factor, Perrie was planning to start a performing arts degree.
Career
The X Factor
Perrie sang "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morisette during her first audition in Glasgow and received praise from Kelly Rowland, who described her voice as “Crazy, yo!” Tulisa wasn’t as complimentary about Perrie’s audition saying that she liked her, but wasn’t madly in love with her. Louis didn’t “get” Perrie’s audition at all, prompting Kelly to ask Louis “what didn’t you get?”. She successfully passed to the other round. She failed to make it past bootcamp and, similar to previous seasons, was placed into a group with other rejected contestants. Perrie and Jesy were put into a two-member group named Faux Pas, but they failed to make it to the judges houses. Judge Kelly Rowland decided to put Faux Pas together with two other girls, Leigh-Anne and Jade Thirwall, to make a four piece band called Rhythmix instead, and put them though to the judges houses, then the live shows.
Their rendition was praised by the judges with Gary Barlow calling them the "best girl band that’s ever been on The X Factor. On 26 October 2011, Rhythmix announced that they would change their name following a dispute with a Brighton-based children's music charity of the same name, after the programme tried to trademark "Rhythmix". A spokesman for The X Factor said, "At the request of the charity Rhythmix, the members of the girl group Rhythmix have decided to change their name, a decision which has the support of Syco and TalkbackTHAMES." It was reported that the group decided to make the change, with no legal requirement to do so, to avoid any difficulties for the charity. On 28 October 2011, it was announced that the group's new name would be "Little Mix".
On 11 December, Little Mix were announced as the winners, the first time a group had won the show.
Little Mix
DNA
Shortly after Little Mix won the eighth series of The X Factor, both Gary Barlow and Richard "Biff" Stannard were rumored to be writing songs for the group's debut studio album. On 25 January 2012, the group made an appearance at the National Television Awards, and performed the En Vogue song "Don't Let Go (Love)". They also accompanied The X Factor judges Barlow and Tulisa Contostavlos on stage to receive the Best Talent Show award won by the programme. On 30 May 2012, the group announced through a live stream via Twitcam that their new single would be called "Wings", and a short snippet would premiere on Channel 4 that week after being played at their filming session for Alan Carr: Chatty Man. The group performed the single for the first time at the T4 on the Beach concert on 1 July 2012. On 17 September, the album's artwork was unveiled via the group's official Facebook page, which also confirmed that the album's second single, "DNA", would premiere on radio on 1 October and would be officially released on 12 November, a week prior to the release of the album. The album's track listing was revealed on 28 September 2012.
Salute
In an interview with Digital Spy in March 2013, Little Mix stated that they wanted their second album to have a more R&B sound. Band member Jesy Nelson added: "I personally want to put a lot more dancey stuff in there. As in, one of the songs that comes on in a club that makes you want to dance. Not that David Guetta sound, but more R&B – a bit like Eve and Gwen Stefani's "Let Me Blow Ya Mind". They also revealed that they would be starting to write material for the new album in the coming months. On 19 September Little Mix held a livestream to announce that they had finished recording their second album and it was going to be sent to be mixed. In the same livestream the girls announced that the first single "Move" would be premiered on radio on September 23. They also sang an acapella of a song that would become "Little Me". On 4 October, Little Mix uploaded a video to their official YouTube page, announcing that their second album would be called Salute and would be available for pre-order on 7 October. The album was released in the UK on 11 November 2013 and released in the US on 4 February 2014.
Get Weird
At the 2015 Brit Awards, Little Mix confirmed that their album was completed, describing it as having a "whole new sound" and projecting the release for sometime in 2015. In May 2015, having written over 100 songs for their third album, they released "Black Magic", the lead single from their third album. They also co-wrote Britney Spears and Iggy Azalea's single "Pretty Girls", which was released in May 2015. The group stated that the album had more of a pop sound than their previous album Salute, an R&B-style album, with the songs being very fun, colourful and personality driven.
On 15 July 2015, the group officially announced on Twitter that their third studio album would be titled Get Weird, and would be available for pre-order the next day. Shortly before the album's release, it was revealed that they were forced to change some of the lyrical content on some of their songs, namely "Love Me Like You" and "A.D.I.D.A.S.", both of which contain sexual themes.