Louise Redknapp lost a "massive chunk of confidence" when she stopped performing.
The 50-year-old pop star - who was previously married to footballer Jamie Redknapp and has sons Charley, 20, 15-year-old Beau with him - shot to fame as part of Eternal in the 1990s, and took time out of the spotlight in the years that followed but felt a sense of "frustration" when others seemed unable to recognise what it all "really means" to her.
She told The Sun newspaper's Bizarre column: "I feel like when you’ve come from being in a pop band years ago and then you’ve come through that whole FHM era, there is a perception of you as a woman, as an artist, as a person. And these people have never met me.
“My biggest frustration is that no one sees the side of the ambition, the talent, the rawness of getting up on stage and what it really all means.
“They sort of just see the face, the stuff around the outside that everybody has a bit of a judgment on.
“I’m my most confident when I am on stage performing. I realised that made up such a big part of who I was.
"So when I wasn’t doing that for that time of my life, it took a massive chunk of my confidence away."
The 'Naked' hitmaker - who will release her new album 'Confessions' in May - insisted that she will not allow others to "pigeonhole" her these days as she mentioned country legend Dolly Parton as an example of someone who has stood the test of time.
She said: "I feel that now, we are in a world where people like to try and pigeonhole us but actually, as long as we don’t allow that, we can just keep on going.
"On the way here, I was watching something on Instagram with Dolly Parton.
“She was playing the guitar and I thought, she is every bit of who we knew her to be 30 years ago, but she’s stronger and better now — and she’s 79. She’s a ball-breaker.
"The industry chewed her up and spat her out so many times but she never let it stop her and she just kept going.
"I feel like I’m still fighting for a seat at the table. In our industry, as a woman, you just have to. I feel like the rules are different.
“I am going to fight and I mean that in a really good way because I hate it when things are written like, ‘Oh woe is me’, because I’m not that girl. I’m enjoying the fight."
