THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY! THE ENCORE — JADE

JADE | That’s Showbiz Baby! The Encore | RCA Records | 10

There’s a version of this story where Jade Thirlwall exits Little Mix, releases a respectable debut, earns some goodwill from the broadsheets, and quietly settles into the comfortable mid-tier of solo pop acts who used to be in something bigger. That version doesn’t exist. Instead, she’s delivered one of the most self-assured pop records in recent memory — and then, apparently unsatisfied, went back and made it longer and better.

That’s Showbiz Baby! The Encore is the deluxe edition of her September debut, expanded with seven new songs and a cover of Madonna’s “Frozen” that has absolutely no business being as good as it is. The original album was already a statement. This version is a manifesto.

What makes it extraordinary isn’t just the quality of individual tracks — though that’s remarkable enough — it’s the complete absence of anxiety. Jade spent three years making this record, deliberately breaking what she described as the gruelling cycle of yearly Little Mix albums followed by tours, a rhythm she came to see as “programming to crave relevancy.” That patience shows in every corner of the finished product. There’s no nervous hedging here, no reaching for a demographic. She’s described her sound as “Frankenstein pop” — disco, electroclash, synth-pop, Europop, tropical house, a bit of techno, all sewn together by someone who grew up worshipping Cascada and the Spice Girls and Madonna and isn’t embarrassed about any of it — and the seams don’t show once.

“Angel of My Dreams” arrives fully formed: an interpolation of Sandie Shaw’s Eurovision winner “Puppet On A String” twisted into something that cuts both ways — a double entendre about fame and control that lands harder with every listen.

That opener sets the tone perfectly. It’s not a song about escaping her past; it’s a song that uses her past as raw material without being consumed by it. Reaching number seven on the UK Singles Chart and earning a Brit Award nomination for Song of the Year, it announced something real. The follow-through on the album justifies every word of that hype.

“IT Girl” is a masterclass in how to make self-mythologising feel earned rather than desperate — the production crackles with a kind of gleeful arrogance that would read as hollow if the hooks weren’t so relentless. “FUFN (Fuck You For Now)” does something subtler: it takes the ambivalence of an unfinished relationship and makes it sound like the most fun you’ve ever had in an argument. The chorus doesn’t resolve so much as detonate.

Then there’s “Plastic Box,” which is the moment the album shifts gear into something more considered. Where some of the record is pure euphoria — and there’s nothing wrong with that — this one sits in discomfort, turning over questions about identity and image with a directness that feels genuinely personal rather than performed. It’s the kind of track that earns the lighter moments around it their levity.

The Encore additions don’t feel like leftovers. “Tar” closes the expanded edition and it’s one of the best things she’s put her name to — slow, strange, uncommonly intimate for a pop record this polished. If the original album’s closer “Dreamcheater” was her flexing compositional ambition, “Tar” is something darker and more honest. “If My Heart Was A House” sits just before it and demonstrates the same quality: a willingness to be vulnerable without making vulnerability the entire point.

The Madonna cover is worth its own paragraph. “Frozen” is not an easy song to approach — it sits in a particular cultural register, carrying the weight of late-nineties ambient pop mysticism that resists being updated without losing something essential. Jade doesn’t update it so much as inhabit it, bringing a weight to the vocal that makes it feel like hers without erasing where it came from. It’s the kind of cover that justifies the decision to include it rather than making you question why it exists.

In a year when Charli XCX dominated the cultural conversation and the question of what mainstream pop could still do felt urgent, That’s Showbiz Baby! — and now its expanded form — stands as a different kind of answer. Where Charli’s Brat made its case through abrasion and attitude, Jade makes hers through sheer, disciplined joy. There’s something almost quietly radical about a debut this confident, this fully realised, from someone who spent over a decade being told what to sing and when.

We’ve been here for Olivia Dean doing emotional precision, for artists making the case that British pop still has something to say. Jade is making that case louder than almost anyone. She is the first of the Little Mix trio to release a full-length solo album, and if this is the standard she’s setting, the bar she’s just placed in the ground is genuinely intimidating.

Watch the video for “Angel of My Dreams” here and tell us with a straight face this isn’t one of the pop singles of the decade.

That’s Showbiz Baby! The Encore is 22 tracks that feel like 22 reasons why patience, when combined with this much genuine talent, doesn’t just pay off — it embarrasses everyone who tried to rush you.