Perrie Edwards has named Whitney Houston as a key inspiration when she started out work on her new solo album.

The Little Mix star will release her debut solo single, Forget About Us, on Friday (April 12), with the track having been co-written by the singer alongside fellow British pop star Ed Sheeran.

But in a new interview, Perrie admitted she wasn’t initially keen on writing material for her solo record. “I was just so insecure, I think, I was just so shy,” she told NME. “And it’s really a drastic change when you go from being in a girl-group and having your girls constantly with you holding your hand – I was literally the baby [of the group].

“And it can be quite overwhelming when there’s loads of people in a room and you’re supposed to be talking about your feelings and your emotions and what you want to put in a song.”

Revealing she told her team “I don’t want to write anything – I just want to be sent songs”, Perrie added: “I remember watching the Whitney movie [‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’] and she would sit in the office and say, ‘I like that, I don’t like that.’ That’s how I imagined my music career going.

“But then they were like, ‘Why don’t you just try some sessions with friends and people you’ve worked with in the past that make you feel comfortable?’ Like Jin Jin – I’ve known her forever and would never feel judged by her in the room.

“So the more I did sessions, the more I became confident [and] the more I was writing down lyric and concept ideas. And then I started taking the reins a bit more and it just kind of spiralled from there.

“There’s only a handful of songs on my album I haven’t either co-written or written so I’m very proud of [going] from one extreme to the other.”