In a decade, the singer has gone from ‘the most hated teen in Britain’ to top 10 success in the US. So why is she still having to defend her past?
About a year ago, Cher Lloyd was shopping in the
Disney Store on Oxford Street when she was approached by a new fan: a middle-aged man who told her that he had seen her recent appearance on Loose Women. “He went: ‘I just want to say, you’re nothing like I thought you were gonna be like – you’re not horrible at all,’” Lloyd remembers. “My heart sank.”
The experience has stayed with her as an example of the “heartbreaking” perception of her in the
UK – not that she has ever been allowed to forget it. Nearly a decade has passed since her barnstorming X Factor audition of Soulja Boy and Keri Hilson’s Turn My Swag On, still hailed by many as a touchstone in the show’s history.