Jade Thirwall struggled to feel like she “important” after stepping away from the “pressure machine” that was Little Mix.
The 31-year-old singer, who shot to fame in 2011 as part of the “X Factor” girl group and uses the solo name Jade, released her debut solo single “Angel Of My Dreams,” which features a sample of Sandie Shaw's Eurovision-winning song “Puppet On A String,” and admitted it took her a while to find her place in the music world.
She told British Vogue: “Little Mix were such a machine, and there was so much pressure to be 'famous'. I was programmed for 11 years to always have to be in the public eye, so when I took a step back and people were saying 'you don't have to open that envelope!' I struggled with not feeling important.”
Speaking about the music video for “Angel Of My Dreams,” she admitted: “The video is a reflection of the music industry that I'm obsessed with, despite hating what it represents.”
“It's the kind of thing you have to look at again to make sense of it.”
The lyric “I sold my soul to Psycho” has been suggested as a jab at X Factor boss Simon Cowell, who ran the now-defunct Psycho Music imprint, but Jade clarified in an interview with Beat magazine: “I'm not talking about that specifically.
“But with this song, I wanted to represent my journey from when I got into the music industry until now and what it's been like. That's why the song is chaotic.”
“The opening is like a montage of music after winning X Factor and breaking into the industry.”
She added: “I don't want to sit here and criticise the last 13 years of my life. I'm very happy and content. But like any job, there are good times and bad times. That's life and my reality. But it's important for me to write about it, not to be sad.”