“Let me show you the view,” says Chlöe Bailey, spinning her screen around to reveal an idyllic white sand beach framed by swaying palm trees. The 26-year-old star is in her happy place of St. Lucia, and, lounging under a huge, striped umbrella, makeup-free in a white bikini, she looks blissfully relaxed.
She’s taken time out from her holiday to chat to me over Zoom ahead of the GLAMOUR Women of the Year Awards, where Chlöe is being awarded ‘Musician of the Year.’ She first found fame as one half of the Grammy-nominated duo Chloe x Halle after she and her younger sister were discovered by Beyoncé in 2013, singing a spine-tingling cover of her song Pretty Hurts on YouTube. For the past three years, she’s been shining solo.
But don’t be fooled by the sunlounger – this is just a brief moment of R&R amid a schedule so hectic, it makes the busiest of her fellow performers look like slackers. The ultimate singing/dancing/acting triple threat, Chlöe is in serious demand right now, racking up successes on record and screen at a dizzying rate.
On screen, she’s just appeared alongside Samuel L Jackson in the crime miniseries Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, and Russell Crowe in the horror film The Exorcism (where the former child star had audiences clutching their pearls by writhing around on a bed, covered in blood, yelling: ‘Fuck you, Priest!’)
Trouble in Paradise, her second solo album and an exhilarating blend of musical styles from sleek R&B to joyful, Caribbean-influenced calypso, Afrobeats and pop, came out to rapturous reviews in August. Her extraordinary Coachella performance in April, of her single ‘Boy Bye’, a fierce, gloriously sweary, catchy-as-hell anthem of empowerment about ditching a toxic, draining man from her life, hit 1 million views in the first week alone.
Self-love is a recurring theme of the album, with lyrics such as, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue/ You might love me good, but not the way that I do’, revealing her prerogative right now. That she’s feeling good about herself is no surprise, and she speaks with a quiet, considered self-assurance you might expect from someone who’s been famous most of her life. Her self-love isn’t always guaranteed, though. “You know how they have those little check boxes?” she says, laughing. “I would have to say, ‘It's complicated’. Some days are so strong, and other days are not as strong, but I'm really proud of myself, because I feel like I'm winning when it comes to that fight.”
To some, Chlöe’s meteoric rise might have appeared seamless; effortless, even, given her prodigious talents and the backing of one of the most revered women in the world. But the reality is never that simple, of course. As a Black girl becoming a woman in the public glare, being bombarded by strangers’ views of everything from her skin colour to her body, she’s had plenty to contend with.
Chlöe and her sister Halle, younger by two years, grew up in Mableton, Georgia. “I’ve always loved singing – I was always doing it, from the age of two-and-a-half – and anything I would do, my sister would do,” says Chlöe. Their parents had nothing to do with the entertainment industry – their dad, Doug, was a stockbroker – but when they realised their daughters’ gifts, they helped them win roles in commercials and films. Chlöe was five when she had her first brush with Beyoncé, appearing alongside her in the 2003 musical comedy The Fighting Temptations, and in 2012, both sisters appeared in Disney’s Let It Shine.
The following year, Chlöe and Halle released their version of Pretty Hurts on YouTube, and it went viral. “It was a time when young singers were doing covers and posting them online, and we were huge Beyoncé fans,” she says. “We recorded it in the basement of our home and begged our parents to let us post it – they were totally against it at first, although I’m not sure why, but they finally let us upload it. We never took it too seriously, because it was a one-in-a-million chance.”
Chlöe treasures the memory of the out-of-body moment she learned that Queen Bey herself had seen and loved the video. "We got an email from her company, Parkwood Entertainment, asking for permission to post it on her socials. Then they shared that Beyoncé wanted to sign us to her label. And we were ecstatic, especially me. I was such a huge Beyoncé fan, I feel like I manifested it. I would always tell Halle, ‘We're going to be the first group she signs to Parkwood’. It's crazy to think that my dream came true.”
She admits to being star-struck when she and Halle went to meet their idol for the first time. “She was on set for a car commercial, and she was so kind to us,” she says. “She looked like a floating angel, and she was just really, really great.” She became their mentor, offering them support which continues to this day. “She has been such an amazing person to have in our corner,”she says. “She gave us the best example: everything she is, is how my sister and I would want to be in our careers – not just in terms of her talent and success, but also in how she treats people with respect and uses her platform to highlight important issues like Black Lives Matter.
“She calls us her little aliens,” she smiles, remembering a key piece of advice Beyoncé offered. “She said we’d have to let the world catch up to us, because we’re so ahead of the curve, they’d never get it at first. She wanted us to believe in ourselves.”
Two acclaimed Chloe x Halle albums and the teen comedy drama Grown-ish, which starred the sisters as twin college athletic stars, followed. For a long time, every professional achievement was shared. Then, in 2021, while Halle filmed her starring role as Ariel in the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, Chlöe went her own way, too. In September that year, Chlöe released her chart-topping first single without her sister, the very grown-up, curve-celebrating Have Mercy, marking her dazzling arrival as a bona fide solo artist.
She’s open about the mental health struggles she experienced while writing her first album, In Pieces, released in March 2023. “The premise of the album is how there’ll be many times that we fall down and get back up, and sometimes our hearts will be broken, but it’s about glueing those pieces back together,” she says. “I’m never shy of talking about it, because I want to be real, not trying to sell a fake image. Everything I do is authentic to who I am. And going through that journey [with depression] can sometimes be lonely, it can be a very isolating feeling, but when you know others feel that way, it makes it a bit more digestible.”
Chlöe has had to grow a thicker skin in recent years. Since going solo, she has attracted far more than her share of criticism, particularly on social media. The sexy outfits she wears onstage and in her videos, the subject matter of her acting work (including an explicit sex scene in the 2023 series Swarm, which some fans branded ‘unnecessary’ and ‘uncomfortable’), whether her sound is ‘Black’ enough: everything she does attracts judgement.
She’s learned to put boundaries in place. “Sometimes I will take certain socials off of my phone,” she says when I ask how she copes with it all. “You know, I think we all need a break sometimes. Or I will just choose to ignore it. I've also gotten used to the block button.”
Part of the sniping stems from people still thinking of her as the cute, clean-cut child star she used to be. “I’m 26 years old, and I’m singing about ‘grown’ topics because I am ‘grown’,” she says. “A lot of my peers in the industry have lyrics that are raunchier than mine, but because people have been used to seeing me as a little girl, it’s harder to digest it.”
But some of the criticism has an unmistakably racist slant. “I am a Black woman,” says Chlöe. “I grew up a Black girl in the South, so [racism] is what I’ve grown up used to.” Within the music industry, she often faces stereotyping when it comes to her sound being boxed into certain genres. On X, she has been accused of making pop to pander to white listeners – a remark she shut down with a gloriously breezy, ‘I don’t have to listen to you baby xox’.
“I do make R&B music, but I also make pop music and alternative and rock and jazz,” she says now. “I never just want to label myself as one genre just because I am a Black girl.” Again, she takes inspiration from Beyoncé, who surprised everyone by releasing Cowboy Carter, her country-inflected album, earlier this year. “She dares to be different,” says Chlöe. “She doesn’t allow people to box her in or label her, and that’s why she’s broken so many boundaries as a Black woman.”
Like every young female star, she also faces a seemingly endless stream of misogynistic commentary about her body. “There are a lot of people in the world who want to tell young women what to do with our bodies,” she nods. “I feel that, of course.”
The political landscape in the US is deeply divided. With the reversal of Roe v Wade in 2022 banning abortions in many states, women’s rights are being eroded, while the rhetoric of the political right aims to stoke racial tension. How does she feel about the situation? “We have made so many steps forward – I can walk down the street and into any store as a Black woman, I can make a living saying the things I choose to say in my music,” she says. “But it’s also sad to see how some of the same issues that women who fought for our rights before us faced are coming back up now, like the right to our own bodies. There’s still a long road ahead to equality.”
She’s looking forward to voting in the election on 5th November, in which Kamala Harris will battle Donald Trump for the US presidency. “There was a time when people who looked like me didn’t have the opportunity to vote,” she says. “I’m a Black woman in 2024 who can make my voice heard – who can actually vote for another woman of colour to possibly be president. For this generation, no matter which way they go, it is important to place our vote and let our voices be heard.”
As a former child star, it’s often assumed that Chlöe is the product of a particularly controlling behind-the-scenes team, orchestrating her career. In fact, almost everything comes directly from her. “I write my music, I produce my music; I produced and engineered almost everything my sister and I did,” she says. “Very few people know that. But I’m not just beauty; I also have brains. My favourite subjects at school were maths and science and technology.”
Impressively, her skills were self-taught. “I learned how to play piano by seeing which chords were what and how to play certain chords online,” she says. “I taught myself how to use music production software, and I would literally just look up producers and engineers online to see how they did things.”
Knowing all the hard graft she’s put in is what gives her the confidence to be true to herself. “I'm pretty adamant and vocal when it comes to my music, and I don't back down,” she says. “Everything that you've seen and heard from me has been what I have wanted to do. And you know, of course, I definitely take in opinions from people, and because I'm still young and I never think it's a bad thing to learn and to grow. But you have to trust your inner voice.”
It's what she remembers when she feels imposter syndrome, too. “Do I ever have it? Of course. But I think it's starting to fade away, because I am realising that, ‘Hey, your hard work has got you here, so you have every right to be here in this room’. And I think we have to remind ourselves of that whenever imposter syndrome starts to sneak up on us.”
She’s learned to cultivate other areas of her life as well as her work, which helps her keep her celebrity status – and the good and bad parts of that – in perspective. Her downtime is spent doing Lego (which she “finds therapeutic”) and hanging out with her friends and family. “My circle’s really small – my godmother, my godbrother, my sisters,” she says. She and Halle remain exceptionally close, and collaborated on a song, Want Me, on Chlöe’s album. “We both have different, very busy lives, so it was nice we were able to be in one place at the same time and create this together,” she says. “She just killed it.”
Halle gave birth to her first son, Halo, last December, and he came to the studio with them. “It’s just crazy that you can look at a baby and feel such a strong connection,” Chlöe says of her nephew. “I tell Halle every day, ‘You are such a strong woman to have birthed such a beautiful, pure spirit.’ I’m just so happy he’s in our lives.”
The Little Mermaid sent Halle’s fame into the stratosphere, but Chlöe is firm when I ask if it’s changed their relationship in any way. “No, we don’t let that define ourselves or our lives,” she asserts. “She’s my sweet sister still. We’ve always been each other’s champions – that’s the true definition of sisterhood, not one dimming their light for the other, but shining bright together. We are two incredibly powerful women on our own, and when we come together, it's even more powerful.”
Their relationship informs her attitude to other women in general; that we should celebrate and lift one another up. She thinks Gen-Z are particularly adept at this. “You know, it's cool and it's popular to be like, ‘Sisterhood!’ But I feel like this generation is actually putting our money where our mouth is, putting our friends and peers in positions of power right next to us, and not feeling intimidated. We’re leading by example. We're not just talking about lifting each other up because it sounds good.”
She takes care of her mental health by travelling to St Lucia when she can to “refuel my spirit. I do boxing whenever I have a lot of anger inside that I don’t want to misplace. I’m also a huge advocate for therapy. When I write music or box or when I’m swimming in the ocean, I can escape for a while.”
Fashion is another escape, and Chlöe has become known for her confident embrace of bold, fierce looks. “I just love what I love in that moment," she says. “And I'm learning that I have to actually say what I like, and not just put something on, just to experiment. It has to resonate with me, because I don't want the piece of clothing to wear me. I feel like Rihanna and Zendaya do such an incredible job at that.
“I love my Prada and Burberry sweatsuits. And I have always been in love with Rodarte – they’re incredible. But day to day, I constantly have on baggy sweatpants or cargo pants with a tank and no bra and hardly ever any makeup.”
She’s currently focused on her music and has plenty more acting work in the pipeline, too: she’s recently been announced as the star of the upcoming film of Girl from the North Country, featuring Bob Dylan’s songs. Beyond that, “Wherever my spirit takes me, that’s where I will go,” she says. “I pick the projects that mean the most to me and make the most sense at that time, and I never cut myself off because I feel I can't accomplish something, out of fear.” That’s what empowerment means to her – finding the strength to do what makes you happy.
“To me, true empowerment means knowing you can fight another day,” she says. “It’s knowing you have the strength to continue on, even when circumstances in life might say otherwise. We can’t empower others before building that inner strength and empowering ourselves.”
European Editorial Director: Deborah Joseph
Deputy Editor, European Beauty Director: Camilla Kay
Entertainment Director, Assistant Editor: Emily Maddick
European Visual Director: Amelia Trevette
European Design Director: Eilidh Williamson
European Fashion Editor: Londiwe Ncube
Website Directors: Ali Pantony and Fiona Ward
Senior Creative Designer: Ben Neale
Talent Booking: The Talent Group
Photographer: Myles Loftin at Giant Artists
Stylist: Sean Knight
Hair: Fesa Nu Using Loc & Twist Gel by LOC N
Makeup: Ernesto Casillas using Dior Forever Foundation and Capture Totale le Sérum
Props Stylist: Maya Sassoon
Production: Get It Productions
Producer: Dev Davey
Production Coordinator: Blanca Ballesté
Production Assistant: Alyssa Harbottle
Digital Operator: DJ Dohar
Lighting Assistants: Alex M. Kennedy and Christian Lanza
Wardrobe Assistant: Cameron Greene
Tailor: Hesmik Kourinian
Prop Stylist Assistant: Grace Hahs
