Jade Live Show Analysis: Pop's Most Unique Star Rises Above TV-Created Past

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least a track featuring a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in engaging in the typical activities that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, 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 the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than the norm.

An Impressive First Single

She opened her solo account with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet On A String.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not every song on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally standard-issue disco pop, powered by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of the Madonna classic Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it has a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs allied to clanging industrial drums. The song 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 Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The artist on stage is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic presence: she is, she states at a certain moment, “trembling uncontrollably”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that Little Mix are back – but the fact that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is unlikely to recede into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

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