For a girl-group veteran, love and fame are the same battlefield

Being in a pop girl group is, in some ways, the ninth circle of celebrity hell. The practice can be infantilizing for the young women involved, while somehow also belittling and tokenizing and objectifying. The participants are carefully stage-managed and yet make easy targets for condescension and snark. And the experience combines the probing visibility of stardom with the dehumanization of being part of a bundle — a cog in the machinery of a Voltronic personality matrix — which can put groupmates in a constant charisma grudge match. As Victoria Beckham once confessed about her days as Posh Spice, “When I was on stage with the Spice Girls, I thought people were there to see the other four and not me.”

The members of the U.K. girl group Little Mix quite literally began in competition. After crashing out of the first challenge of The X Factor as soloists, Perrie Edwards, Jesy Nelson, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall were sorted into two groups to compete against one another again. Both failed, but the four were fated for reclamation as judge Kelly Rowland, formerly of Destiny’s Child, brought them together as a quartet. Initially competing as Rhythmix, the group became Little Mix in the midst of running the gauntlet, and was the first girl group to win the reality show. Its 2012 debut single “Wings,” a brassy girl-power anthem, established the basis of a bustling dance-pop with weapons-grade vocals and strutting, shameless, rap-inflected sass, as if splitting the difference between Jessie J and Lily Allen.

By 2016’s Glory Days, Little Mix was the biggest girl group in the world, if never quite megastars in America. But even with a renaissance around the corner, the foursome never got to revel in its influence. Nelson announced her departure in 2020, citing the difficulties of the operation and the considerable upkeep required: “I find the constant pressure of being in a girl group and living up to expectations very hard,” she said that December. The group briefly returned as a trio, but the writing was on the wall. It announced an indefinite hiatus in 2022, and solo news began trickling out for the three remaining members. Leigh-Anne Pinnock released her EP No Hard Feelings in May of last year, and Perrie Edwards has a self-titled album out next week.

These are the conditions under which Jade Thirlwall, now performing mononymously as Jade, made her debut solo album, That’s Showbiz Baby! The title is a bit of a misdirect, taken from the clicking electropop single “It Girl,” which she has referred to as “poking the bear.” Sashaying and selectively melodramatic, the song does feel like a provocation, its lyrics mocking the handlers and svengalis who make pop-star maintenance feel like puppetry, her voice nearly robotic as she levies challenges to the doll factory. “I did feel anxious about pissing people off or any sort of backlash,” she told The Independent last year. “But I have to write about what my experiences are — I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It is, you know, my reality.” She is cheeky in her music, even snapping at known bad boss Simon Cowell on “Angel of My Dreams,” and being mercilessly poked and prodded and photographed into oblivion hasn’t dulled her wry sense of humor. The album, however, is only glancingly concerned with the pop star apparatus. Instead it opts to focus on her reality, what it means to be an it girl seeking her boy-toy equal. Sure, it’s hard being a pop star, it suggests, but have you tried dating one?

Stepping out of the shadow of a girl group has been a point of emphasis in 2025, but on That’s Showbiz Baby!, Jade is less concerned with making a case for herself as a soloist than with simply savoring the euphoria of free play in the nu-diva sandbox. If there’s any stress to prove herself, it doesn’t show; these songs are preoccupied with the world she already knows. (Notably, the primary producers — Mike Sabath, MNEK and Lostboy — all worked with Little Mix first, implying not just continuity but a desire to remain in the orbit of that sound.) “I was this young lass from South Shields who just wanted to make it as a singer, and I went on to be in the best, coolest girlband ever,” she told The Guardian. “Now I get to have a bonus round.” That contentment is quite the boon to her freewheeling and yet subtly referential style, which takes disco and electroclash, ’80s pop and R&B-lite, club sleekness and ballroom spectacle, nods to U.K. pop royalty (Sandie Shaw) and girl-group forebears (The Supremes), and strings it all into a shimmering sequin gown, one she wears proudly as she navigates being an entertainer and lover.

It’s clear that those experiences can overlap — both in the sense that the personal often fuels production and presentation, and that being an object of attention can feel like fantasy in any setting. Like romantic love, fan adoration can be intoxicating, can feel controlling, can warp one’s perception of self. Listening to Jade’s debut, there’s the sense that passion is showbiz, that a certain amount of tumult, drama and exhibition may be inherent to the adventure — or if not, then at least that there are unique complications when a pop star attempts to find and sustain a partner. (Jade has admitted that “Plastic Box,” a strobing song about struggling with jealousy, was written about the early days of her relationship with her longtime boyfriend Jordan Stephens.) There’s a theatricality to the way she swoons through the hook and verses on “Unconditional,” as she mourns her inability to escape the thrall of a self-neglecting beau. And on “Self Saboteur” and “Headache,” she’s reflective about her actions and their effects on her audience of one, how swept up in a moment she can become.

A relationship can be a kind of performance, and Jade seems intent to shoot it from as many angles as possible. Sometimes that means literally pretending, as on “FUFN (F*** You For Now),” when she must set aside her frustrations to smile and wave at an event. Elsewhere, as on “Midnight Cowboy,” the bedroom becomes a showroom: “I’m about to perform like I’m on tour / Baby, clap for the encore.” Being seen is a prism of parallel experiences. “I’m in heaven when you’re looking at me,” she sings on “Angel of My Dream,” reckoning with the surreality of being the center of attention, and when she later tells a partner, “I make my moves on you and then I know you can’t take your eyes off of me,” on “Lip Service,” she is tapping a similar sensation: the allure of putting on a show, the ways in which being watched conjures exhilaration. That attention can be a double-edged sword. Jade compares a hypercritical lover to a hating, overzealous fan on “Glitch“: “It’s an obsession / Always got me feeling like I’m less than / Focusing on every imperfection,” she sings, the searing-hot scrutiny mirroring the hair-splitting that comes with the spotlight.

Maybe that’s why the closer, “Silent Disco,” which comes just two songs later, feels like a fitting resolution to her informal thesis. It’s a choral ballad about being so drawn to someone, so in sync, that the rest of the world falls away. Like the namesake event, it references being conjoined amid the crowd, drowning out outside noise; her match here is not a fan, but a duet partner. “Baby, these stars are blushing / And it’s our private party / Might look a little stupid to them / But to us it’s something,” she sings, longingly. Jade has been open about being the Little Mix member least excited about its hiatus, but there’s a sense that being in a different kind of unit suits her best, that she finds real solace in a party of two — and that the adoration of your person has as much wattage as any lit-up stadium.