🔗 Share this article

With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards 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 before the inevitable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating 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 fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single 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.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her debut album 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 typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end 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 resolved, a media announcement to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.