After two gold albums and five gold or platinum singles in two years, the girl group Fifth Harmony announced Sunday night that Camila Cabello has left the quintet.
“We have been informed via her representatives that Camila has decided to leave Fifth Harmony,” the 4 1/2-year-old group posted on Twitter following their performance at Y100’s Jingle Ball at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Florida. The group added that it “will be moving forward with the four of us — Ally Brooke, Normani Kordei, Dinah Jane and Lauren Jauregui … We are four strong, committed women who will continue with Fifth Harmony as well as our solo endeavors.”
The remaining foursome thanked their fans, known as Harmonizers, and said, “We are excited for our future, and we can’t wait for what the new year brings.”
Cabello, 19, was born in Cuba and lived with her family there and in Mexico City before they emigrated to Miami when she was a child. In 2012, she attended the Greensboro, North Carolina, auditions for season two of the singing competition “The X Factor,” and became one of five solo hopefuls that music producer and series creator Simon Cowell assembled for what would become Fifth Harmony. The group made it to third place that season.
“Our friendships with each other sort of happened backward, where we started out seeing each other at our worst moments,” Cabello said in an archived official biography formerly on the group’s website. “We just wanted to make it to the next round, so we didn’t really have time to be like, ‘Pink is my favorite color too!’ But we ended up bonding pretty fast anyway, because that was our survival.”
In October 2013, the group released the EP “Better Together” and went on to win an MTV Video Music Award before even releasing a debut LP. They dropped the album “Reflection” in January 2015, with the hits “Bo$$,” “Sledgehammer” and “Worth It,” and this May released “7/27,” titled after the date on which the band was formed.
