Jade Review: Pop's Quirkiest Artist Transcends TV-Created Origins

With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the reality that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.