Jade Thirlwall, the last member of Little Mix to release solo music, has finally dropped her debut single, “Angel of My Dreams”. The singer tells BBC Newsbeat that she’s ready to bring some excitement to the pop world.
“I’ve been writing for two and a half years now for this project,” Jade says. “I think I needed that time to evolve as my own artist outside of Little Mix.”
Jade’s journey to solo stardom began on The X Factor in 2011, where she was paired with Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, and Jesy Nelson to form Little Mix. But Jade reveals that she wasn’t always ready to be a solo artist.
“I know back then I could never have done it on my own,” she says. “I needed to go through my adult life and my womanhood with those girls around me to get me through that.”
In “Angel of My Dreams”, Jade tackles the brutal music industry head-on. “You only care about money,” she sings. “Sellin’ my soul to a psycho, they say I’m so lucky, better act like you’re lucky, honey.”
The song also samples Sandie Shaw’s “Puppet on a String”, a nod to the Eurovision-winning entry that Jade feels reflects her experience in a girl group forged on reality TV.
“Me using that is kind of more of a fingers up to what the industry said for such a long time about us as a band,” Jade says. “We worked really hard and we wrote a lot of our music. We had a very clear vision of who we wanted to be.”
With her first solo track released, Jade feels she’s now able to have an individual identity as an artist. “I don’t feel the pressure of being the last of my bandmates to go solo,” she says. “I’m proud of my artistry and I think we’re all very different as solo artists too.”
So what can fans expect from Jade’s upcoming album? “The unexpected,” she teases. “I wanted to make sure I had pretty much a whole body of work ready to go before launch. This is just the beginning.”
