Jade Live Show Analysis: The Music World's Quirkiest Artist Rises Above TV-Created Origins

With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route currently taken by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with 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 usual.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are back – but the fact that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.