After a steady stream of singles from the Little Mix girls, JADE has truly saved the best til last. On her debut solo single that samples Sandie Shaw’s Eurovision winner from 1967, she proves that she is anything but a puppet on a string, dropping a pop-bomb that explodes with personality.
On ‘Angel of My Dreams’, JADE and producer Mike Sabath promise to “do somethin’ crazy!” —and they deliver with gusto. In its dreamy beginning, where a distorted sample of ‘Puppet on a String’ kicks into gear underneath some 1980s-inspired plinky synths, we might think that JADE is lamenting a former lover, as she sweetly sings, “angel of my dreams / I will always love you and hate you, it’s not fair”.
However, as the beat drops, it quickly becomes clear that this is not your standard pop-girl ballad. The dreamlike synths make way for a pumping electro house verse in which JADE turns on the attitude, demonstrating her ability to deliver vocal versatility, whilst the lyrics recall the likes of Rachel Stevens’ ‘Some Girls’ and Britney Spears’ ‘Lucky’. “Sellin’ my soul to a psycho / they say I’m so lucky”, she spits in a staccato style, sharply critiquing her past as a member of a girl group under Simon Cowell’s Syco label. On her debut, JADE is quick to shed her previous identity as a girl band edition Barbie doll, and ready to make her name as someone who does pop differently.
And the result is great: the song is weird! The warped Sandie Shaw sample that should clash with JADE’s bright vocals just doesn’t. And the track is never conventional. It never follows one sound for too long, in a mini-suite that moves from 80s synth ballad to electro club banger to playful art pop and back again. But all of it comes together beautifully, creating a darkly delicious piece of pop that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in radio-friendly music.
The music video, which has amassed over 1.5 million views since its release on 19 July, not only accompanies but elevates the track: its wry humour and artful references to pop music culture demonstrate JADE’s awareness of who she is as an artist and the history of the culture that she belongs to. In this extraordinarily fun video, in which she plays multiple versions of herself, surrounded by a greasy-haired assistant who spits into her coffee and a tracksuit-sporting manager with a grotesquely large body, it’s difficult not to see JADE as something of an auteur — it all feels incredibly authentic, unique and, crucially, designed and dreamt up by her.
How it lands with the public will remain to be seen in next week’s charts, but for pop music cultists, it seems like we’re in for a real treat with JADE.
Words by Imogen Fahey
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