Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members 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 guest appearance by an American rapper, or a lunge towards “grownup” Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a dimly remembered placeholder, the sight and sound of someone gamely killing time in the years before the inevitable reunion tour.
It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall oddly invigorating. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject to the media-trained constraints of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop of a noticeably more intriguing stripe than usual. She opened her solo account with last year’s superb Angel of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, noisy synthesisers and samples from Sandie Shaw’s Puppet on a String.
