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

With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least a track including a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario 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 ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, among them loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device 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 music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jolting and disjointed mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

As the set on her first solo tour 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 also standard-issue disco pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of the Madonna classic Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 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 song sections that present a nearly discordant style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by deep reverberation. She dedicates Unconditional to her mother: it features a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs allied to metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects 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 begins like a piano ballad before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the enmity towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that the original group are reunited – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they sing along to an album that only came out 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 unlikely to recede into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

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