🔗 Share this article

With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track 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 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 makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed 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 loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the legend “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 music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she suggests showing appreciation 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 Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. 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 barely recalled interim project.

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