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With the exception of Harry Styles, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least one single including a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years prior to the unavoidable band comeback concerts.

A Unique Journey

This common scenario that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by former Little Mix member 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 emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – judging by the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair 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 launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and disjointed melange of grand emotional pop songs, 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 first full-length release her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a medley of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional where Angel Of My Dreams came from. The song Headache combines an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with song sections that present a borderline atonal style of rhythmic music or are enfolded by cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while Natural at Disaster begins like a keyboard-led emotional song before suddenly shifting into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she is, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she suggests thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers end – the hostility towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster patched up, a media announcement to announce that the original group are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to an album that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the domain of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in Manchester tonight and is touring the UK through October 23rd.