🔗 Share this article

With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a move into mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange 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 first solo tour proves, not every song on her first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out 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, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.