The Pop Corporation

When it’s done correctly, listening to a popstar lambast fame, the world of pop, and curse the nature of celebrity, it’s transfixing.

Think about how GaGa sent the whole thing up, lampooning and hate-loving the spotlight with ‘The Fame / Monster’. Think about MJ’s ‘Leave Me Alone’, ‘Idle Worship’ by Paramore, Billie Eilish’s ‘NDA’, and a host of other art pieces that somehow manage to attack the beast of success without sounding whiny (one of the worst sins you can do in pop).

Add to the list, Jade Thirlwall’s ‘That’s SHOWBIZ Baby’ – a savage, witty, sometimes tender and very, very fun harpooning of her time in reality TV and life in a pop group.

While snipes of this kind veer toward the sleaze of Hollywood after parties, casting couches and lonely hotels, Jade’s chaotic take is much more camp and British than that, making the melodrama all that more relatable.

Since she started this concept album – yep, it’s a concept album alright, with more of a cohesive narrative than most prog rock groups manage – real pop heads have been gasping for this album. Has it been worth the wait? Well, Jade released enough music and gave enough face that no-one felt deprived, and the timing of everything was genuinely exemplary, with singles treated like standalone events, a Glastonbury performance being a fuller bodied teaser, and tag-teaming with Confidence Man, to let you know that this album was going to be fun and big.

And yes, having listened to the album, it is well worth the wait. In fact, it’s the best post X Factor solo release we’ve seen to date, helped in no small part by her skewering of the show that opened the door for Jade.

Elsewhere, pop TV alum haven’t veered too far from what made them. Sure, Harry Styles grew a moustache and wore some pearls for some mildly adult pop, but mostly it’s been quite sweet mainstream pop from sweet kids. Little Mix were of course, a pop tour de force, but going back to their hits, few would have predicted what Jade had planned.

The post-Mix world has had some good songs, but Jade is different. Her music flew out of the traps and felt genuinely exciting and more importantly than that, absolutely overflowing with individuality. No-one else could have made this album, and Jade’s rise should shake things up with the notion of what’s possible in a post talent show world.

While Jade isn’t ungrateful or rude, she’s showing everyone that there’s a lot of life to be had outside of the talent shows, and that you don’t have to be slickly polite – you can be a raw nerve and you can take the piss out of yourself and everyone else around you.

And if you’re Thirlwall, you can do all this and make everyone dance their socks off at the same time, which is what we’re all here for.

What’s so rewarding about the album is that it backs the gut feeling everyone had about Jade all along, which was that she was a massive music fangirl, who really gave a shit – and it pours out of every bit of this album. Her taste is eclectic and everywhere on the album, from classic pop, glittery disco, underground house, R&B, cabaret and musicals, big dirty wub wubs, all making for a tight blend from a frantic mixtape bursting out of her head.

It’s brilliant, captivating, maximal music for the real ones.

From her debut solo cut ‘Angel of My Dreams’, Jade wanted to make “Frankenstein pop,” letting the joins show in the music, and what we end up with something so idiosyncratic and British, that you can file it alongside other lauded projects that could have only come from these shores. Think Soul II Soul, The Kinks, Spice Girls, Katy B, ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’, Miss Dynamite, UK garage, The Specials – not necessarily sounding like the above, but something that feels so like the melting pot of Britain.

With Jade’s album, amongst all the processing of global pop, you can hear the echoes of working men’s clubs, youth clubs, chippie teas, provisional night spots, strong tea, BabeStation, and pub function rooms and it’s all the better for it, because it shows the strength of her personality, rather than the usual Desperate To Break America that can blight British pop music. It’s so confidently her, even at the more tender moments of the record.

The working class bite to her lyrics are what really makes this album rattle along at lightning speed. You could be forgiven for focusing entirely on a thundering beat when she sings “say goodbye to autonomy – now your body belongs to me; put me on the pedestal, watch me dance
dance to the beat ’til I can’t stand,” ending the song with “it’s a no from me”, should you be in any doubt about what she’s taking aim at.

Elsewhere she’s broken, a whirling dervish, irritated, righteous, a hot mess – and it all feels very real and relatable, probably moreso for those of her fans around the same age who have grown up with her.

She could’ve smiled sweetly and used the same crop of writers that are making hay right now, but there’s something about this album that feels so different from her peers. It’s an album that has opinions with joined-up thinking. It’s not just a handful of market-researched singles and some album tracks – the whole thing makes sense start-to-finish. It’s a rare thing in current pop that this is an album that’s been designed as a long-player. It deserves repeated listens.

With the accompanying videos, you can watch and listen to the whole thing in one unbroken sitting, because Jade and her team knew that this is something you should digest in order. It’s a richer experience when you do.

This is an album by, and for, unashamed students of pop music. She’s been prepping for this her whole life, it seems, and now, she’s created a statement that isn’t pious or preachy, but a whole lot of fun and really, really smart.

If this is her starting out as a solo artist, god help everyone for what comes next, because this might be one of the finest British solo careers we’ve had in a decade.