Jade Live Show Analysis: The Music World's Most Unique Star Rises Above Manufactured Past

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single featuring a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan emblazoned with the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with electronic pair Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that present a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she announces at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade performs at the Manchester venue O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.