JADE - THAT'S SHOWBIZ BABY!

From the first juddering seconds of 'Angel of My Dreams' it's obvious JADE has no intention of offering the usual polite, risk-averse introduction to her solo career; instead she barrels in with something stitched together like a mad cabaret act, flipping through styles like a magician riffling a deck of cards, daring us to keep up, daring us to roll our eyes and miss the gag, and in the process making it very clear that she knows exactly what she's doing. After a decade of being one-quarter-slash-third of Britain's most successful girl group, she has absolutely no interest in behaving like the dutiful alumna with the steady mid-tempo ballad and the carefully A&R-ed guest spot – she's decided her first statement has to be part spectacle, part provocation, part confession, and all hers.

The result is an album that delights in its own contradictions. It's messy but exacting, camp but tender, wry but emotionally direct. JADE has described her approach as "Frankenstein"-ing songs together – "Frankenstein pop", if you like – and it fits: tracks veer between modes, sewn together at unlikely angles, switching register just as they seem to be settling. In less capable hands, the whole thing would dissolve into novelty, but the chaos is held in place by a centre of gravity that is pure personality. This is music that thrives on audacity, a kind of knowing, distinctly British audacity cheek with an instinct to undercut drama with humour and to let a punchline land right in the middle of a heart-on-sleeve confession.

What's most striking is how those contradictions play out across the record. One song will be a straight-faced disco fantasia, all rhapsodic synths and breathless exhortations. The next will be an abrasive tangle of distorted beats, where she casts herself as the problem in the relationship. A track that begins like a bawdy Western skit – 'Midnight Cowboy', complete with a cheeky scene-setting intro from Ncuti Gatwa – quickly mutates into a ribald club anthem. Another paints longing in oddly grotesque imagery, as if to admit insecurity by making it cartoonishly vivid. Rather than collapsing under the weight of ideas, the album feeds off their friction. Each jarring left turn is its own kind of punchline, and JADE knows exactly when to let the listener in on the joke.

At the centre is a voice that finally has room to sprawl. She belts like a diva one moment, murmurs like a conspirator the next, tosses off a whistle-note flourish for the sheer pleasure of showing she can, then snaps back into deadpan spoken asides. What keeps it compelling is that she's not simply demonstrating range, she's inhabiting characters. The impression is of someone who understands that performance is as much about persona as technique – that the joy comes in the costume changes, the arched eyebrow, the decision to sell melodrama one second and parody it the next. The production is equally happy to exaggerate, shoving drums to the front, letting basslines distort, scattering glitzy synths. It's brash, sometimes gaudy, but always alive.

Beneath the showy stuff, there's a conceptual spine that gives the whole thing heft. 'That's Showbiz Baby' isn't just a shrugging title; it's the worldview that runs through the record. Showbusiness itself is cast as a toxic partner, glamorous and abusive yet impossible to resist. Songs position her as the survivor of that affair, scorched yet laughing at the absurdity of it all. There are digs at industry power and the toll of fame, and a recurring sense that the circus is equal parts thrilling and corrosive. Even when she writes about her mum on 'Unconditional', folding pain and devotion into a disco pulse, the framing is knowing. That refusal to separate sincerity from spectacle is what makes the album tick.

Elsewhere, the emotional lens narrows to a miniature and becomes more piercing for it. 'Plastic Box' takes a ridiculous insecurity – wanting to be your lover's first and only – and spins it into something both poignant and strangely anthemic, a happy-sad pop song about that irrational jealousy that creeps in even when you know better. It's a neat encapsulation of the album's trick: let the camp framing disarm you, then tell the truth plainly.

And yes, the maximalism extends to the mechanics. Basslines yank the room around, drums arrive like stage cues, synths shriek as often as they shimmer. When she goes full disco, it's sequins and strobes, not tasteful retro pastiche, and when she wants abrasion, she's happy to push into dentist-drill frequencies. The point is theatre, not wallpaper. Even the record's gleeful magpie moments feel deliberate. 'Before You Break My Heart' builds itself around an interpolation of The Supremes' 'Stop! In the Name of Love', a knowing wink at pop's sample-hungry present dressed up as mirrorball drama.

It isn't flawless – and to be honest, you wouldn't want it to be, but even the wobbles are more endearing than damning, smudges on a technicolour poster rather than structural failings. The overwhelming impression is of someone who has been storing up ideas for years and finally has the stage to fling them all out at once.

Crucially, it matters because it sounds like authorship. Rather than the cautious solo calling card, JADE delivers something unreplicable – a maximalist scrapbook of camp excess, neurotic confession, British banter and sheer vocal horsepower. In an era where pop often irons itself flat to fit the algorithmic playlists, or provides a form of rebellion so smooth it's lacking any form of edge, she's gone the other way. Bold strokes, messy joins, songs that lurch and clash and dazzle, it's an album that insists on being an event.

Jade isn't just trying to step out of a shadow; she's pulling the curtain down and setting the scenery alight. It's loud, gaudy, dazzling, sometimes absurd – and absolutely alive. If this is the debut, imagine the encore. That's showbiz, baby.