Jade Thirlwall Live Show Analysis: Pop's Quirkiest Artist Transcends Manufactured Origins
With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the public imagination. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least a track featuring a cameo by an American rapper, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.
An Idiosyncratic Path
This common scenario that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – judging by the audience this evening, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.
A Superb Debut
She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.
As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not everything on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a medley of nineties club anthems, 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. The song Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.
An Appealing Presence
The artist on stage is a hugely appealing, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a official undergarment to the merch stand.
What Lies Ahead
It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to an album that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.
Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester this evening and is touring the UK until 23 October.
