Jade Thirwall - 'People blow smoke up you, but I'm always humbled by my wincing mam'

She’s the with the big solo future - the dark horse of the group who has shocked fans by outshining her fellow bandmates . Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jesy Nelson in the charts.

They’ve all had some success but , who now goes by JADE, has been, well, crushing it - having won a and landed herself a set at this year’s Glastonbury. But while Jade admits all the attention - and a lot of time in LA - could easily go to her head, there’s one person who will always bring her back down to earth - her mam.

“I’m always with my family and friends, I like to stay grounded,” says the 32-year-old singer. “My mam will always be the first to humble me if I do anything. But you need that. It’s hard not to change when you know, people are blowing smoke up your arse all the time. So I’ve really had to keep the right people around me.”

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She certainly got a reality check when she played her debut single Angel of My Dreams to her mum, and her reaction convinced her it would be a hit. Jade, speaking on Nick Grimshaw’s podcast due out tomorrow, says: “I knew the stakes were high, I knew everyone would be like, ‘What’s she gonna do, coming out of the girl band?’ And in my head I was like, I’d much rather people hated the song than be like, ‘Oh, that was all right’.

“When I played it, my mam literally winced. I played it and she went, ‘Oh, I don’t understand’. She said, ‘I don’t get it’. And I was like, ‘Great, you know, we’re on’.” The song, released last summer and which pays homage to Jade’s hometown of South Shields, stormed up the charts to No7 and was nominated for a BRIT award.

It was a spectacular start to her solo career which would see her win best pop act at the BRITs, where she also performed, and be named as a trailblazer at the Rolling Stone UK Awards.

Jade, who now has five singles to her name including her latest, FUFN, is now working on her first album and preparing for a much anticipated UK tour. But it’s what may be her biggest ever solo show at this summer’s Glastonbury Festival which is clearly on her mind.

She says: “Yeah, insane, I still can’t believe that. I love Glastonbury, last year I went and I was like. ‘I’d love to do it.” But she admits: “I’m a bit nervous about it. It’s such a big deal. I’ve got to do a 45-minute set, I think, so I need more than five songs!”

Jade, who with achieved five No1 singles and 19 top tens, and won three BRITs, admits it hasn’t been easy going it alone after the band announced a hiatus in 2022 after 11 years together.

Remembering the night after the band’s last show, she says: “I went home back to my flat, and then the next day I woke up and I looked at my diary, and for like the first time in 11 years, there was nothing in it.

“And the spiral that I had because I was like, what? My life had been planned out for me for, like, years in advance! I was so conditioned to being told where I’m going when and all that stuff.

“We didn’t go on a break because we hated each other. We just always said that we’d take a break when it was still on a high. We were doing really well. We still adored each other. So it was the right time to do it. But it did feel like I was like, in a relationship and it just stops. I really had to get used to existing, like on my own. I was really proud of myself for doing that.”

She adds: “I just started writing loads. The more I wrote, the more I felt liberated, like oh gosh, I can write about my own personal experiences. Now I love it. I still have moments, like when I did the BRIT Awards, and I walked in the room for the first time on my own, I was like, oh my God, this is so scary. Because we were just so used to having each other, and doing press on my own is .”

And she says she is now “feeling the love” both from Little Mix fans and new admirers of her music.

She says: “I think with Little Mix we were dark horses at the beginning, and we exceeded expectations by doing well. And then as a girlband in the industry, again there was this constant dark horse mentality, of proving to everyone why we deserved to stick around.

So I think as the years have gone by, I feel like our fan base was always rooting for us, or just wanted us to do well. And I've felt that on my own as well, which has been really lovely. “

- Dish from is available on all podcast providers.