🔗 Share this article

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration 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.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she states at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to declare that Little Mix are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK through October 23rd.