Jade Thirlwall discusses her time X factor As a member of the pop group Little Mix, he won the eighth season of the British talent show in 2011.
Along with bandmates Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jesy Nelson, the quartet became the first group to win the UK version of the show. Little Mix has since released six studio albums, the most recent being 2020’s confetti. The band went on hiatus in 2022, and all members embarked on solo careers in the following years.
talking independentThirlwall said parts of the show were “terrible” while amplifying the pressure to appear on the show and providing a level of protection for contestants. The British version of the show was last broadcast in 2018, but other versions of the show are still broadcast in other parts of the world, including Denmark, Italy and Indonesia.
“I think it has to end, I think this kind of show can’t exist anymore. We’re in a different place now,” Thirlwall said of the game. “We’re not going to put a mentally disturbed person on a TV screen and laugh at them for being terrible at singing. The idea of joking about it on a show is just too cruel. It’s all very Roman. But at the same time, that’s not what I get into music The best training ever?
Thirlwall added: “I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had some sort of mental health issue after watching the show, and, even now, I’m personally ambivalent about criticizing [it]because it changed my life,” she said. “I come from a very ordinary working-class family in the north, I’ve tried sending demos to record companies, I’ve performed here and there, I’m doing everything I can to do it, I need a show like this to give me a chance .
Thirlwall, who has auditioned for the show three times, also spoke about the accommodations for female contestants who were placed in shared dormitories. “Even as an 18-year-old, I knew someone was mentally disturbed in there and it kept everyone up at night,” Thirlwall said. “I didn’t know if there was security outside the house. It’s scary to think about it now, but I was too young to realize it at the time.
She continued: “I would say that five percent of the people in that incident did not survive unscathed; the other 95 percent suffered in silence,” she said. “How do you go from being on that show back to a 9-to-5? How do you get signed to a record label, thinking you’ve made it, and then once your song doesn’t hit the top ten, you’re dropped? We’re Part of this machine, it was so savage that even then we knew every day how lucky we were to still be signed.
In 2023, Rebecca Ferguson (runner-up to Matt Cardle in Season 7 in 2010) criticized the show, calling her experience “traumatic,” and pleaded with broadcaster ITV to investigate. The show has come under renewed criticism following the death in October 2024 of One Direction’s Liam Payne, who also appeared on the show during the same season as Ferguson and faced numerous addiction and mental health issues throughout his career.
Later this week (January 10), Thirlwall will release her latest solo single “IT Girl” via Sony Music. Her 2023 single “Angel Of My Dreams” tackles the dark side of the industry and is included on british billboard Song of the Year chart, and “showcases a passionate, focused artist ready to embrace every aspect of her new solo era.”
