JADE - That’s Showbiz Baby!

If it feels like this, the debut solo album from JADE - aka former Little Mixer, Gallagher mocker and national hun Jade Thirlwall - has been a long time coming, it’s because, well, it has. Announcing her as the single most exciting name in topline pop (bar, perhaps, Chappell Roan and Charli), lead single ‘Angel Of My Dreams’ first descended over a year ago, its madcap exploration of fame’s double-edged sword a show-stopping demonstration of her artistic ambition. And that was just the start: since then, the South Shields singer has kept everyone - fans and critics alike - well and truly on their toes, dropping appetite-whetting tracks that ran the gamut from pulsing, hot and heavy club numbers (‘IT girl’; ‘Midnight Cowboy’) to Lady Gaga-esque melodrama (‘FUFN’) and funk-flecked grooves (‘Fantasy’). Lyrically, too, she always seemed one step ahead: between the sex-positive, feel-good bangers were vulnerable admissions of insecurity amidst the fickle fame machine and eviscerating asides about exploitative industry types (well, one high-trousered, Dayglo-toothed exec in particular). Hers was a run of singles of such consistent quality that you couldn’t help but think - has JADE already played all the best cards in her hand? 

In a word: no. The latter half of ‘THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!’ is a dizzying journey through genre, era, and Jekyll and Hyde dynamic shifts that more than lives up to the vitality of its previews. ‘Headache’, for example, has all the attitude of a heat-warped Pharrell 7”; ‘Natural At Disaster’, meanwhile, offsets earnest crooning with choral BVs and glitchy, video game-like effects, a Frankensteined collage of the shredded pop ballad blueprint. The album’s only slight stalls come with ‘Self Saboteur’ and ‘Lip Service’ - a pair of shimmering synth-led cuts which, while not bad by any stretch (both recall Caroline Polachek at best, The 1975 at worst) feel frustratingly safe next to the balls-to-the-wall experimentation of the rest of the record. Because, clearly, JADE thrives most when she’s throwing curveballs: namely, the gloriously ‘80s guitar pop of ‘Unconditional’ - which could sit shoulder to shoulder with Pet Shop Boys and Depeche Mode - and The Supremes-sampling ‘Before You Break My Heart’: an impossibly catchy instant-classic that casts her as the natural successor to Diana Ross’ girl-group-to-solo-superstar trajectory. After a career’s worth of constricting, prescriptive pop formula, she’s now finally concocted a recipe for success on her own terms - and it’s anything but vanilla.