Jade Thirlwall Live Show Analysis: Pop's Quirkiest Star Rises Above TV-Created Origins

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single including a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the merchandise stall is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.

A Superb Debut

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

During the performance on her first solo tour demonstrates, not everything on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or rather the thrilling strain of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she states at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she suggests showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that the original group are reunited – but the reality that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that only came out a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of 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 plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom through October 23rd.