Jade Thirlwall Live Show Analysis: Pop's Quirkiest Artist Rises Above Manufactured Origins

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 – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least one single including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken 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, among them loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a medley of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific 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 song sections that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster starts out 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, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes thanking them by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the reality 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 makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade plays the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.