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Harry Styles aside, individual artistic journeys of former members of televised singing competition groups seldom grip the audience's attention. They usually follow certain rules – often a pursuit at a toughened-up R&B sound, complete with at least one single including a guest appearance by an American rapper, or a move into mature mainstream-approved polished adult contemporary – and they typically become a dimly remembered placeholder, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

A Unique Journey

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by Little Mix’s Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that ex-reality TV group artists are known for undertaking, including emphatically stating that she's free from the media-trained constraints of the factory-produced music business – judging by tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the official goods stand is a fan emblazoned with the legend “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a song line from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but nevertheless, the music she’s opted to make is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

An Impressive First Single

She launched her individual career with the previous year's excellent Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jolting and disjointed mixture of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

During the performance on her first solo tour proves, not every song on her debut album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: Before You Break My Heart is insanely catchy, but it's equally typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by precisely the Supremes sample the name implies; the show is extended with a interpretation of Madonna’s Frozen that transforms into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from the track Pacific State by 808 State to Set You Free by N-Trance.

More Intriguing Material

But there’s also more where Angel Of My Dreams came from. Headache melds an catchy refrain reminiscent of Abba with verses that present a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with cavernous echo. She offers Unconditional to her mum: it features a fabulous melody, early 80s syndrums, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of 2000s electronic punk movement, or rather the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by the electroclash genre, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a malevolent electronic grind.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished figure: she is, she states at a certain moment, “shaking like a shitting dog”; shouting out her LGBTQ+ fanbase, who are present in large numbers, she proposes thanking them by including a branded jockstrap to the merch stand.

Future Possibilities

It may well end the way these kind of solo careers typically finish – the hostility towards ex-group member Jesy Nelson voiced within Natural at Disaster resolved, a press conference to declare that the original group are reunited – but the reality that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they sing along to a record that was released just a few weeks prior makes you wonder. And should it occur, the closing performance of Angel Of My Dreams emphasizes that Thirlwall’s solo career is unlikely to recede into the domain of the dimly remembered placeholder.

• Jade plays the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester this evening and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.