🔗 Share this article

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are known for undertaking, including loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, 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, jolting and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar allied to metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that Little Mix are back – but the fact that every attendee seem to be word-perfect as they join in vocally to an album that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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