Jade Thirlwall ditched a lot of her solo songs because they sounded too much “like Little Mix”.
The 33-year-old singer has revealed she wrote a whole album of material after the girl group embarked on a hiatus back in 2022 but she didn’t use a lot of the tracks on her 2025 debut album That’s Showbiz Baby! because she didn’t want her new music to be similar to the group’s previous hits.
She told Variety: “I had pretty much written a whole record by the summer after the hiatus.
“I’d got in my head that I’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot, got to stay relevant. Thankfully, some of my people around me were like: ‘Just wait and keep writing.’
“In hindsight, I listen to some of that music, and it does just kind of sound like Little Mix …
“I really had to exist on my own for a bit, and be like, okay, who am I now, you know? It’s like when you break up with someone, and you all of a sudden have to find your identity again.”
She went on to add: “You get one chance to cement yourself as a solo artist coming out of a group; it’s a lot of pressure. My logic was, I’d rather come out f****** swinging with something brave and bold and might miss, but at least you can’t say I’ve not tried to do something big. …
“I was really inspired by Gwen Stefani’s What You Waiting For? because she came out [as a solo artist after No Doubt] with that banger. I loved that the concept was about her not knowing what to write for her first record. Genius!
“So I was really drawn to artists that had come out of groups, and I think the thing I loved about those artists was they came out swinging and they took a risk, like Gwen did.”
Jade revealed she was also inspired by Beyonce’s Crazy In Love – which helped launch her career as a solo artist after shooting to fame in Destiny’s Child.
She joked: “Beyonce had no business bringing out a whole f****** brass band for Crazy In Love and doing that walk in the video. “