Jade Thirlwall is still in awe over Little Mix’s achievements.
The girl group – comprised of Jade, Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock, along with Jesy Nelson who left in 2020 – won The X Factor in 2011 and went on to huge success before going on hiatus in 2022 and Jade revealed she and her bandmates still reminisce on their achievements.
She told RTÉ Entertainment: “I’m so proud of what we achieved,” she said. “Sometimes we’ll message in the group chat and one of us would say, ‘Oh my God, I’ve just watched the BRITs performance we did in 2017, weren’t we amazing!’.
“It’s so hard when you’re in that bubble to understand the greatness of it. The best thing about it is – we remain friends, we remain equals, but also we created such a lovely fan base. As a girl band, that’s what it’s about – it’s about female empowerment, sisterhood.
“So many of our fans became lifelong friends off the back of that fandom. Even now, as a solo artist, the front row of fans at the festivals are those diehard, day ones that have been there since they were 8-years-old. I think that’s so beautiful.”
Despite her love for the band, Jade, 32, is happy she didn’t embark on a solo career immediately after the hiatus was announced as all the music she wrote back then was “another Little Mix record”.
She explained: “In my head, I was like, ‘I’ve got to release something straight away, everyone’s going to forget about me. I’ve got to ride the wave of Little Mix’ – all that stuff that I’ve been programmed to think as a pop artist.
“And now I look back at some of the music I wrote then I’m like, ‘Wow, that really was just another Little Mix record’. So I’m really glad that pushed myself to wait. Thank God I gave it a minute to figure out who I am again.”