‘I’m ready to give some pop girlie drama’

If there’s one word Jade Thirlwall’s fans are sick of, it’s “soon”.

“They hate me for that,” the singer says. “I’m so sorry.”

After Little Mix announced they would go on a break after their 2022 tour, Jade is the last member of the girl group to release her solo music and has long been appeasing fans with the promise it was on its way.

Now her debut single, Angel of My Dreams, has arrived, Jade tells BBC Newsbeat: “I’m ready to give some pop girlie drama”.

“I’ve been writing for two and a half years now for this project,” she says.

“I think I needed that time to evolve as my own artist outside of Little Mix.”

Little Mix was first put together on The X Factor in 2011, made up of Jade, Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and, until 2020, Jesy Nelson.

It was Jade’s third audition for the show – she was 18 and dreaming of making it as a solo artist.

But in a clip from the series, you can see the moment her face crumbles as judge Kelly Rowland tells her: “I would actually love to see you in a girl group”.

“I think the reason why I reacted like that was because in my mind when I pictured a girl group of the time, the bands that were popping off were like The Pussycat Dolls,” Jade says.

“Who I loved, but they were really sexy and little old me stood there in my braces and bow tie, I was like, ‘How am I meant to be that in a girl band?’

“Also growing up, I did have a tough time at school, like being bullied and stuff by girls.

“I was scared I think more than anything that I’d be put with a bunch of girls that I didn’t fit in with because I am – well, I still am – but I was a bit of a nerd and a weirdo.”

Looking back, Jade says she wasn’t ready to be a solo artist.

“I know back then I could never have done it on my own.

“I needed to go through my adult life and my womanhood with those girls around me to get me through that.

“The music industry is brutal, especially if you’re young, and you’re going into it on your own. So I’m grateful,” she says.

In Angels of My Dreams, Jade doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the music business.

“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.”

It also opens with a sample of Sandie Shaw’s Puppet on a String.

The song was the UK’s first ever winning Eurovision entry in 1967, and Jade accepts fans might need to be Eurovision superfans like herself to get the reference.

But she feels using the song lets her reflect how it was being 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.

“We worked really hard and we wrote a lot of our music. We had a very clear vision of who we wanted to be.

“When you come from those shows you get labelled constantly as, ‘Oh, they’re manufactured or they’re puppets or they’re blah, blah, blah’.

“We always had to fight that.”

Little Mix became one of the most successful girl groups ever, with billions of streams and three Brit Awards.

Now with her first solo track released, Jade feels she’s now able to have an individual identity as an artist – and emphasises she hasn’t felt the pressure of being the last of her bandmates to go solo.

“I think if I’d released sooner, I might have felt a bit more pressure.

“I don’t feel that. I’m proud of my artistry and I think we’re all very different as solo artists too, so I don’t need to feel a pressure in that sense.”

With Angel of My Dreams, Jade says she wanted to “come out with a bang, surprise people and push myself creatively”.

So what more can fans expect from Jade as she finalises her album?

“The unexpected,” she says.

“I wanted to make sure I had pretty much a whole body of work ready to go before launch.

“This is just the beginning. It’s the perfect song to introduce everyone to the Jade world.”

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here.