The famous American singer and the former Fifth Harmony member Ally Brooke recently revealed her disheartening experience with the group on the debut episode of her podcast The Ally Brooke Show.
Ally said that she didn’t enjoy her time in the group as it was toxic and traumatizing. She said, “I hate saying this, you know, my time in Fifth Harmony … I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t love it. It was hard because there was so much going on. So much behind-the-scenes. So much toxicity. So much abuse. So much abuse of power. So much mental abuse. Verbal abuse. It’s just horrible, and to me it’s a shame, because we were so big. I should have enjoyed myself more.”
Other than that, Brooke also revealed how she was taken advantage of by an unnamed label head, when she went to seek help from him. She said, “The person that I asked for advice, he tried to take advantage of me. I show up to a meeting with him, and he gives me a freaking thong, which is very inappropriate, because … I know what he was trying to do there.”
Brooke also addressed that all of this took a toll on her and ruined her. She admitted not trusting anyone, even the people in her circle. She said, “It really damaged me for quite some time and for quite a while. I don’t want to hang onto the negative, but I have to be honest.”
Additionally, she told that looking back at her time in Fifth Harmony is painful. She said, “I’ll look at a music video and all I’ll remember is how I felt that day, how I felt so insecure or I felt let down or I felt like I wasn’t good enough, and people around me told me that I wasn’t good enough, I wasn’t cool enough, I wasn’t valued, nobody cared about me. It was awful.”
She addressed being fat shamed and how the group members were forced to fight for their parts in songs.
However, Ally thanked Normani, Camila Cabello, Lauren, and Dinah. She said, “I wanna just tell the fans that … I’m so proud to have been there. I’m so thankful for Fifth Harmony, it changed my life. I got to see the world, meet people who completely changed my life and my world and the direction of my career path and all that, and I got to meet so many amazing friends … but it’s kind of a weird balance. It’s a balance of being grateful but also being OK with the fact that things were not OK for me in that. And I took a lot, me personally. It was traumatizing, and some things I’m comfortable sharing, and I’m comfortable talking about, but some things I’m still not yet ready.”
