INTERVIEW: JADE launches debut album 'That's Showbiz Baby!': "I wanted this album to sound like chaos...I wanted you to listen to every track and be like oh god, what's coming next?"
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: 12 September, 2025
Every so often, a true pop music moment sweeps the globe - think Charli XCX’s Brat summer - and for those of us who love the genre, it is one of the most exciting times to live through.
For Jade Thirlwall, who performs under the mononym JADE, she commanded one of the those cultural movements in July last year when, after 11 years as part of chart topping band Little Mix, she released her first solo single ‘Angel of my Dreams’. A truly unique creation that veered crazily - in the best possible way - between genres, it was breathtaking in its originality, scope and artistry and despite its decidedly non-commercial sound, it wasn’t long before it made JADE the most talked about artist in pop. It peaked in the top 10 of the UK Singles Charts, accumulated over 100 million streams to date and scored nominations for Best Pop Song at the Brit Awards, Best Contemporary Song at the Ivor Novello Awards and contributed to JADE winning Best Pop Act at this year’s Brit Awards.
Today JADE continues her journey as a solo artist with the release of her debut album That’s Showbiz Baby! And just as she did when she introduced her solo career with ‘Angel of My Dreams’, the album is an outstanding collection of music that blends and blurs genre, often in a way that you can honestly say is utterly unique, and it does something that only the greatest music does, it pushes pop music to the next level. There is a feeling that in the coming months and years the ‘JADE sound’ is going to be a dominant force in pop.
Against the eclectic soundscape, JADE’s lyrics explore her troubled relationship with fame and music, the objectification of women in music, as well as relationships and her struggles with mental health. The album goes for the jugular straight away - her first six singles one after the other, possibly the greatest run of pop singles in the last 12 months. ‘Angel of My Dreams’, sits in pole position, no other placement would really make sense, and amongst it’s electrothrash-popera-trance sound there is deep melancholy as JADE grapples with her love-hate relationship of her music career and being a celebrity - ‘I will always love you and hate you it’s not fair…I will always want you and need you, you don't care,’ - ending on the plaintive ‘I’ll always love you’.
‘IT Girl’ is almost a reflection on how her solo career exploded as she became the ‘it girl’ of music. The lyrics however, set to a hip hop-rap-pop blend, are dark as she throws light on the more unsavoury elements of the music industry as she quickly becomes objectified and treated as little more than an object. ‘Say goodbye to autonomy / Now your body belongs to me…Remove your filthy paws / You're filthy.’
‘FUFN (Fuck You For Now)’, co-written with RAYE, is an atmospheric pop song that explores a rupture in a relationship that doesn’t necessarily mean the end. ‘Love you, but tonight you let me down /
No more words, just fuck you for now.’ It is followed by what is perhaps the most traditional pop song on the album, the delicious electropop of ‘Plastic Box’. It also looks at relationships, but this time the insecurity and self-doubts from JADE as she grapples with jealously at her lover’s former partners. It's irrational and impossible ‘I know you had a life before me / But I'm jealous, obsessive / And I wanna burn all your history’
The sultry, R&B, rap of ‘Midnight Cowboy’ and the 1970s glam disco of ‘Fantasy’ round off the first section of the album, and if there is any fear the top loading of the album with the singles creates a lopsided listening experience, it is quickly dispelled by the brilliance of ‘Unconditional’. Starting with 1970s disco pings and a electronic beat, the song’s pre-chorus erupts into an almost rock-metal blast before soaring into a chorus of the most dreamy synth melodies you are likely to hear this year.
JADE reveals more of herself on ‘Self Saboteur’, which opens with the line ‘I’m always fucking it up’, as she sings of sabotaging a relationship she is happy in against an electropop track with bursts of classic 1980s synth shimmys.
‘Headache’ opens with a siren and develops into a song that brings in influence from the new jack swing sound, while the following track ‘Natural At Disaster’ is the closest the album gets to a ballad, starting with just a piano before changing it up with a clash of sound and gradually developing a more complex soundscape as JADE sings of being in relationship that mental health issues are tearing apart ‘It’s hard to love you / When you hate yourself’.
As ‘Angel of My Dreams’ included a sample of a famous song (‘Puppet On A String’), so too does ‘Before You Break My Heart’, this time the Supremes classic ‘Stop! In The Name Of Love.’ An album highlight, admittedly in an album full of highlights, it ingeniously threads the sample through the song without ever becoming reliant on it, or derivative, and sets it to a subtle beat that echoes the Motown sound while still remaining an contemporary electronic pop song.
The album closes with ‘Silent Disco’, a pared back, at time almost orchestral, track that eventually explodes into a glamorous pop track with one of JADE’s finest vocal performances. It ends the album on a note of joy, hope and love, as an anthem to a relationship that is all encompassing. ‘A love so sick I’m queasy / And I need you like the same way you need me…it’s a love so strong gives me power.’ It is a dramatic, uplifting and truly beautiful way to end an album that is remarkable in every possible way.
JADE has created one of 2025’s greatest albums with That’s Showbiz Baby! and quite possibly one of music’s greatest debut albums. There is so much beauty, intelligence, wit and heart in this album, alongside the simply incredible music, melodies and vocals, that is it almost guaranteed to lodge permanently in your heart. JADE’s artistry on this album could quite possibly become the template for the next wave of pop music, and it is likely be spoken about as an inspiration for years to come. We recently caught up with JADE to chat more about the creation of this remarkable album.
Hi Jade! It is delightful to speak with you, and it's been even more delightful to have your beautiful album in my ears. I feel like I've dipped my head in all the fantasy fairgrounds I've ever read about, it's so good and so over stimulating in the most beautiful possible way.
Oh thank you so much, I love that.
You’ve had a kick ass year, but I also imagine hectic. How does it feel just to be you at this moment, is it all adrenaline, or are you just Wonder Woman?
Yeah, it's an intense time right now in the Jade world! But I'm very, very grateful for it. I knew this would happen, and I do love it. I love my job, I love what I do, I love doing pop, girly things. And, you know, you’ve gotta do it if you want to be that girl, you've got to do all the things. You've got to work hard for it. I've always been sort of prepared to do that, but it's a very chaotic vibe at the minute for me.
Which kind of goes hand in hand sonically, but also with the title of this album, just throwing yourself into show biz. There's elements of fizz, and then there's these really beautiful, slowed down ballads that then just pull you into another space. You have said you wanted your music to be a pop punch to the face and I feel like this debut really does that. How on the money to that statement do you feel this album is?
Yeah, that's what I wanted, I wanted this album to sound like chaos. I wanted it to sound like you were literally listening to me experimenting and finding my sound. Trying different things of who I want to be on my own. It's kind of a Frankenstein pop record of all the things that I grew up loving as a child. I feel like you can really hear the remnants of the music that I grew up listening to; Motown, clubland classics, 80s power ballads or big synths. It is really a fusion of my musical loves growing up, and me figuring out how or what the Jade sound is. I wanted it to feel a bit relentless, to be honest. I wanted you to listen to every track and be like oh god, what's coming next?
Relentless is just a perfect way to describe it, in such a delicious way you've. You sound like you are having the best time, and It's just such an exceptional debut album. I’m curious how you feel your songwriting craft has developed in running into this album, because it just it comes out so strong.
Thank you. I think the minute I sort of got in my bag was when I managed to find writers and producers to work with that weren't asked about what was working right now. I work a lot with Mike Sabbath on this record, and I love him because he doesn't care what's on radio at the minute. He doesn't care about what's popping off right now. I can be with people like that and just experiment and have fun with it and just throw shit at the wall and see what happens. I think that was the moment I felt really liberated as a solo artist, because I do think I am quite a weird person, and I think my brain is quite chaotic with so many different ideas and loves within music, why not mash them all together and create bizarre pop songs? I'll always be a pop girl at heart, but I've had so much fun throwing the rule book out the window a little bit, not listening to what the top 50 is right now on Spotify. I didn't want to be swayed by outside voices or other people's opinions. I just want to make music that I find exciting, that keeps me on my toes, and that makes for a fun show.
Do you think that also comes from your career trajectory, because there was always a collection of people, I’m not just talking about Little Mix, but everything was such a discussion and collaboration, and there was always a higher power deciding for you. You always knew your own style, but that has possibly allowed you to develop the power and the strength to come into this album guns blazing.
Yeah, I think at this point in my career, I've played the game, I've agreed to singles that maybe I didn't necessarily want, but was what other people wanted. I've played it safe, I've done the whole big chart success stuff, and so I wanted to treat this solo project like the bonus round where I can just be like fuck it, I’m going to do whatever I want. If it does well, amazing, but regardless, I'm creating stuff that I love. My boyfriend always says, ‘you’ve clocked the game, you've done it, so this should just be about enjoying it and having fun with that.’ I think the difference now is that I know how the game works. Once you're aware of it, you are in more control. I am still part of it, you know, I'm signed to a major label, and I obviously have to do well in that respect, but I think I have got more control now, and it is paying off by me taking those risks or sticking true to my artistry and it's opening doors that maybe I'd couldn't get in before.
I love that. There's such a fire to your music which is just really delicious to hear. Which song on the album was the most fun to create, and which one, if any, did you think ‘ooh, that might be a push too far’?
’Fuck You For Now’ was the fun one to create, just because it did feel like a release of female rage. I knew I wanted a big pop chorus banger on the album, but I still wanted to Jade-ify it. I think that came from the concept, how can I create a big chorus pop song that would work on radio, but then let's make it more difficult by calling it ‘Fuck You For Now’! I wrote that one with Raye, and I love working with her because she gets it. She's also been in the industry for a long time, and she has her own battles with that, so we have a good connection in that sense. We had a lot of fun venting in the session, and making it as big as possible. The chorus of ‘Fuck You For Now’, it's high and it has almost a theatricality to it. I think a lot of the songs actually have a bit of a musical theatre nod to them, just in terms of the drama and the theatrics. I grew up loving musical theatre as well, and it's been fun bringing that into my pop music.
I'd say the one where I was like, this is actually really getting a bit mental, was ‘Headache’, and it does just sound like a headache of a song! Which is what I wanted, I wanted it to just be like ‘it’s a bit much that’. It does have that switch up at the end with this huge drum and euphoric moment, me and Mike had a lot of fun with that one as well. That's song sort of stemmed from me talking to Pablo and Mike about how monstrous I can be pre menstrual and how when I'm on my period, I can be a bit of a nightmare to be around. Then it evolved into this ‘you still love me, even though I'm hard work’ concept. So I wanted the sonics and the musicality of it to just feel like banging your head against a brick wall, and then the outro of that song bursts open into this euphoric loveliness of ‘Oh, wow, you still love me.’ When me and Mike, listened to it at the end, we were like, this is very bizarre - and so it should go on the album.
‘Angel of My Dreams’ also had that sort of chaos that we really thought the label wouldn't be into, especially as a first single, so I was really pleasantly surprised when literally everyone on the team was like, ‘this is it, you found it.’ That was cool for me as well, to know that I had a team around me that were on board with the crazy, you know.
Completely crazy, but I remember hearing that track when it came out, as you coined perfectly earlier, there was something theatrical, there was something musical, there was something show pony carousel about it, which is always flooded with nostalgia and warmth. So as bonkers as you can get, there's like a homely sound to it, which is really beautiful
Yeah, with ‘Angel of My Dreams’ I wanted people to feel quite sad listening to it as well. The song does have a sort of desperation to it, and what was a turning point for me was admitting my desperate plea to stay in the industry. There is this sort of tragic addiction that I feel to the music industry, and the moment I was self aware of that and was willing to write about it, that was a turning point for me and my artistry. It is very honest, also with the music video and the S.A.D. version, it is literally like a musical theatre performance. And I wanted the song to sound like that It sounds like it's got three acts. It's got that beautiful sort of balladesque beginning, that is that feeling of entering the music industry, like ‘oh, this is so lovely’. And then when that beat drops, that feels like being thrust into the spotlight, and that's how it felt for me for the last 14 years. It's just a relentless hamster wheel of constantly trying to stay on it. So ‘Angel of My Dreams’ really reflects that love hate relationship that I have with the industry, and I don't think a song could be more me. My only downside to that now is that when you create something so magical, it’s like, how do I create that again? I don't think I can. I think they'll only ever be one ‘Angel of My Dreams’, and so I have to not punish myself with that idea that I have to recreate that again.
Well, I think you said it perfectly before, you've nailed it so just do what you want now and have a great time. Yeah, I did that and what will be will be. Whatever the next song or the next big single is will have its moment at the right time. It really put me on the path of experimenting and being brave with that.
This whole single run across this campaign, for me, has been fun. Like, now we're veering to ‘Fantasy’, which is disco led, a shiny, lovely, sparkly, disco track. I like the idea of surprising people with what's coming next, and having a run of singles that, again, felt a bit chaotic. And I saw that as well, when I came out of ‘Fantasy’ and then into ‘FUFN (Fuck You For Now)’ people were like, what is the plan here? But I like that. I like the confusion. I like showing people that I'm not afraid to release something that's very different to the last track. And it showed people what they were in for with the album.
100%. Going back to ‘Angel of My Dreams’ for a moment, I'm curious, how was that journey to come full circle through the dream, and then realising that the dream can be a bit of a beautiful gauntlet, but then to come to a juncture where you realised that, I love this, and I want to battle to keep it going. Particularly at such an incredible part of your career and when you are still so young, was that a bit of a mindfuck in itself?
Yeah, I think it is. I entered the music industry at 18, and from then on it was brutal. Me and the girls were all of a sudden catapulted into this world where we were famous overnight. There was paparazzi following us everywhere, following us home, opening taxi doors to take a picture under our skirt. It was like, ‘Oh, wow, okay’. That was a very abrupt awakening into the music industry. It almost felt ritualistic and like a rite of passage to have to deal with that very early on. You're also navigating all the powers that be and label execs and people telling you who you should and shouldn't be. And you do very quickly become addicted. I feel like the music industry, if it was personified, is this kind of toxic gatekeeper of your success, and you become addicted to pleasing it. Especially for us, the kind of label we were signed to and coming out of a show like The X-Factor , we were always on edge of, like, if this next song isn't a number one, do we get dropped? If this next album doesn't do well, what does it mean? We were always on tenterhooks, being very aware that at any minute that rug could be pulled from under us. And so you are desperate to please, you're desperate to show everyone constantly that you're worth it and that you are good enough to still be there.
I don't think that mentality has ever really left me to be honest. Even now, even though I'm doing music that I really, truly love and it is very very me, I still sometimes lie awake at night like, have I done this right? Is this person gonna be happy with that? Do I need to make sure I get a viral TikTok in order to keep going? So it is a very toxic relationship. But like you say, I love it. I do love it. I love the glitz and glamour. I love the drama of it. I love that when I was a little girl, I'd watch these movies or musicals, of show girls or cabaret or A Star is Born and be like I'd love to be in that one day. And then I became a part of it, and I was like, Oh, this is sometimes really awful. Love it!
But that's show biz. There we go!
Yes, that’s showbiz! The glitz and glam. One of my bucket list moments was working with David LaChapelle because to me, he is show biz. He's it. And when I got to do a music video with him, he was chaos in the best way, and he was everything I wanted. He was a diva, he waltzed on set and called the shots. There was one moment just before we shot the video, where he got all his team in, and he literally put me on an actual pedestal, and they were picking me apart with what I was wearing. They were talking at me, not to me, and I just thought, this is my dream! This is everything I wanted, because it's showbiz. It should be harsh, it should be cut throat, it should keep you on your toes. Because sadly, that creates the best artist, I think anyway, in pop music especially. Pressure makes diamonds, sort of thing. I do really thrive, maybe unhealthily, off the pressure. So I can't imagine never doing this, and I love to moan about it, and I love to write about the bad bits, but I'll always show up and enjoy it as well.
That’s Showbiz Baby! is out now via Sony Music. You can buy and stream here.
Follow Jade on Instagram and TikTok.
