Camila Cabello Jokes She Only Auditioned for The X Factor to 'Marry Harry Styles': 'Embarrassing'

Camila Cabello rose to fame on The X Factor — but if it wasn't for Harry Styles, her path to stardom might have looked a little different.

The "Bam Bam" singer, 25, hitched a ride with James Corden for a Carpool Karaoke segment on The Late Late Show Monday night, and revealed that her teenage crush on Styles was the driving factor behind her decision to audition for the same show on which he once competed.

"I was 15, I was a huge One Direction fan, and I was like The Voice? X Factor? And I was like, 'Well, One Direction will be at X Factor, I don't know if they'll be at The Voice, so let me audition for X Factor,'" Cabello recalls of her thought process. "This is really embarrassing, and I can only say this because obviously that was like, 10 years ago, but I literally was like, 'I'm auditioning for X Factor because I will marry Harry Styles.' I really believed that at the time."

Joe Maher/Getty for Bauer Media; Kevin Mazur/Getty for The Recording Academy Camila Cabello; Harry Styles

While Cabello went on to admit that holy matrimony was perhaps aiming a bit high, she had her sights set on the "As It Was" singer, 28.

"I didn't think we were going to get married, but I was like, 'I'm gonna audition for X Factor, we're going to meet, I'm going to become a singer, and we'll probably fall in love,'" she said. "It wasn't like, marriage, but I was like, 'We'll probably fall in love.' By the way, that's the first time I've ever confessed the real intention behind me auditioning for X Factor."

Cabello, of course, did audition for the show's second season in 2012 as a solo contestant and was placed in Fifth Harmony, which eventually finished in third place.

Her path echoed that of Styles, who auditioned solo for the British X Factor in 2010, and also finished third after being placed in One Direction.

Courtesy CBS James Corden and Camila Cabello

Though the status of her crush remains unclear, Cabello is on the market after she and boyfriend Shawn Mendes called it quits in November after two years of dating (she revealed to Corden that she has received some Instagram DMs from blue-check users since, but declined to name names). Styles, meanwhile, has been linked to Olivia Wilde since January 2021.

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She did, however, admit during a polygraph test that she actually prefers her collaborator Ed Sheeran's music to that of Styles.

Elsewhere in the segment, Cabello and Corden sang "Havana," "Don't Go Yet," "Bam Bam," "Liar" and "Mr. Brightside," which the star said is her go-to karaoke song.

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She also reminisced on her days in Fifth Harmony, and said that while there is no part of her that misses being in a band, there are some aspects that she remembers fondly.

"There's no hard feelings for me about it because I am like, we were so young. I'm such a different person than that time," she said. "But there were some really fun times there too, for sure. And I do miss being in a band in a sense that like, when I am doing promo or whatever, I want to have other people next to me to banter off of. But I don't miss splitting creative decisions five ways."

The singer released her third album Familia earlier this month, and recently told PEOPLE (The TV Show!) that she has a new perspective on life after a tough stretch.

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"I was cripplingly anxious and was in the worst mental health state ever," she said. "And then I took a break at the beginning of the pandemic. I started doing therapy [and] trying to feel better."

"For me it was, if this process doesn't help me in feeling better, and if it's not me being honest and vulnerable and unfiltered, I don't really see how this is going to happen," she added. "That was my intention, was just to be myself, whatever that looked like at the time."