UK Number 1 this week in 2011: Nicole Scherzinger's Don't Hold Your Breath was a hard-fought solo chart-topper

officialcharts.com:

No-one has perhaps had a more laborious road to solo stardom than Nicole Scherzinger, but she got there in the end and then some.

Nicole’s original efforts to launch as an artist in her own right stalled in 2007 with the scrapped project Her Name Is Nicole, although songs written for it would end up back with the Pussycat Dolls, most notably When I Grow Up, a Number 3 hit for the group in 2008.

But after a hiatus following the release of their second album Doll Domination (due to basically every member except Nicole leaving the group), the future X Factor judge would re-centre in the best way possible with her actual debut album, Killer Love.