JADE

The mononym JADE might be hard to place for audiences, but she has been hitting the charts regularly as a member of Little Mix, who won the British singing series The X Factor and amassed over a dozen Top Ten hits, particularly in the U.K., including five chart-topping singles. After the group announced their hiatus in 2022, JADE embarked on a solo career and scored a hit of her own in 2024 with the thrumming, synthy summer jam "Angel of My Dreams."Jade Thirlwall was born in the coastal town of South Shields in 1992, the youngest child of an English father and a mother of Egyptian and Yemeni descent. Taught to speak Arabic at a young age, her childhood was marked by multiple incidents of racism from classmates, and she found solace in singing and learning how to use makeup. In 2008, when she was 15, she auditioned for the U.K. singing competition The X Factor but didn’t make it past the second “bootcamp” phase. After an unsuccessful attempt in 2010, she was invited back in 2011 and ultimately placed in a potential group called Orion with singer Leigh-Anne Pinnock. When that group fell apart, series judge Kelly Rowland of Destiny’s Child suggested Thirlwall and Pinnock join two other finalists, Perrie Edwards and Jesy Nelson. The resulting group, originally named Rhythmix and changed to Little Mix for legal reasons, ended up winning their season at the end of the year -- the only all-female group to do so in the history of the program.Little Mix's debut single, a cover of Damien Rice's "Cannonball," topped the charts in the U.K. and Ireland, just barely missing the coveted top Christmas spot in England. By the following summer, the quartet began to release original material, with Thirlwall often contributing as a writer; the track "Wings" was another U.K. number one and reached the Top Ten in Australia and Japan. Little Mix's catalog of upbeat, harmony-driven pop hits helped usher in a new wave of all-female groups to the British charts, with songs like the number one hits "Black Magic," "Shout Out to My Ex," and "Sweet Melody" and popular favorites "Move," "Salute," "Touch," the Stormzy collaboration "Power," and "Woman Like Me," a collaboration with Nicki Minaj.Thirlwall continued with Little Mix after Nelson departed in 2020 citing health issues. The trio announced a hiatus in 2021 to pursue solo projects and take some personal time (Pinnock and Edwards each became mothers that same year), but they stressed that the move was temporary. In the meantime, Thirlwall released her debut single, "Angel of My Dreams," in July 2024. Cascading between pulsating electronic beats and a grandiose chorus that recalls Mariah Carey's biggest hits, the single reached number seven on the British pop chart. A second single, "Midnight Cowboy," followed that September.
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