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Harry Styles aside, the solo careers of ex-participants of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the public imagination. These efforts typically adhere to certain rules – either an attempt at a toughened-up R&B sound, replete with at least a track including a guest appearance by an US hip-hop artist, or a lunge towards “grownup” mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone enthusiastically passing the years before the inevitable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that makes the idiosyncratic path currently taken by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She definitely participates in doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she's free from the press-managed restrictions of the manufactured pop industry – based on the audience this evening, the top-selling product on the official goods stand is a handheld cooling device displaying the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with electronic pair Confidence Man – but regardless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

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 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 demonstrates, not every song on her first full-length release That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as her debut single: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by exactly the Supremes sample its title suggests; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

However, there exists additional material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache combines an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She dedicates the track Unconditional to her mother: it features a wonderful tune, eighties-style electronic percussion, and crashing rock guitar combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or rather the thrilling strain of millennium-era popular music that was strongly inspired 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 artist on stage is a hugely appealing, delightfully authentic presence: she declares, she announces at one point, “shaking like a shitting dog”; giving a shoutout to her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are here in force, she proposes showing appreciation by including a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the enmity towards former bandmate her previous colleague Jesy Nelson voiced within the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that the original group are back – but the reality that every attendee appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a few weeks prior causes one to ponder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the dimly remembered placeholder.

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