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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a more edgy urban music style, complete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards mature Radio 2-friendly smooth pop-rock territory – and they typically become a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time before the inevitable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

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 wont to do, among them loudly underlining that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – judging by tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her musical partnership with dance duo Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than the norm.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb Angel Of My Dreams, a highly unusual, jarring and fragmented mixture of grand emotional pop songs, noisy synthesisers and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: the track Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet its title suggests; the show is extended with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation 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 material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that offer a nearly discordant brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates Unconditional to her mum: it has a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with clanging industrial drums. IT Girl unexpectedly reanimates the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or more accurately the exciting variation of early 00s pop that was strongly inspired by the electroclash genre, 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 artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic figure: she declares, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

What Lies Ahead

It could conclude the manner these kind of solo careers typically finish – the enmity towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster patched up, a press conference to announce that the original group are back – but the fact that every attendee seem to be knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a month ago causes one to ponder. And should it occur, the final performance of Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Jade's individual musical path is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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