Parenting & Family Quote by Nicole Appleton

The power here is how aggressively unglamorous it is. Nicole Appleton, a pop musician whose public image was built in an era that treated celebrity motherhood as either a glossy magazine spread or a tabloid courtroom, chooses neither. “Nothing beats” is deliberately absolute, a blunt hierarchy that demotes tours, attention, and even adult romance beneath a single, ordinary moment: a child looking up and saying “mum.”

The phrasing is doing quiet identity work. She doesn’t say “my son/daughter said my name,” she says “say mum” - the role, not the person. It’s a way of claiming a new center of gravity after years of being framed by external narratives: band politics, headlines, the expectation that a “pop girl” stays perpetually available, light, and unattached. In that context, “mum” becomes both intimacy and legitimacy. It’s not a brand; it’s a bond.

Then she undercuts any potential sentimentality with “I get soppy all the time.” “Soppy” is self-mocking British shorthand, a small defense mechanism that keeps the moment from sounding like a press release. It signals self-awareness: yes, she knows this is cheesy, and she’s saying it anyway. That’s the real intent - permission to be emotionally overt in a culture that often demands performers stay shiny, not soft.