Jade Thirlwall Live Show Analysis: Pop's Quirkiest Artist Rises Above Manufactured Origins

Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands seldom grip the public imagination. They usually follow certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly polished adult contemporary – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, including loudly underlining that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her initial individual concert series demonstrates, not everything on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is quite as interesting as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of nineties club anthems, from 808’s Pacific State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a wonderful tune, early 80s syndrums, and crashing rock guitar allied to clanging industrial drums. The song IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster starts out like a keyboard-led emotional song before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

An Appealing Presence

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she is, she announces at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she suggests thanking them by adding a branded jockstrap to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the hostility towards former bandmate Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to announce that the original group are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience seem to be word-perfect as they sing along to an album that only came out a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade 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.