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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, among them loudly underlining that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She opened her solo account with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and samples from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also standard-issue disco pop, powered by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with verses that offer 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 combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the sound of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while Natural at Disaster starts out like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her queer audience members, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It may well end the manner such individual artistic pursuits typically finish – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that Little Mix are back – but the fact that every attendee appear word-perfect as they sing along to a record that only came out a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the final Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.