Jade Thirlwall Live Show Analysis: Pop's Most Unique Artist Rises Above TV-Created Origins
With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, 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 enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.
An Idiosyncratic Path
It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual.
An Impressive First Single
She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.
As the set on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation 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.
More Intriguing Material
But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.
An Appealing Presence
The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.
What Lies Ahead
It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers end – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.
Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK until 23 October.