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It’s common for former girl group members to distance themselves from their pop origins once they go solo. But Jade Thirlwall, now no longer part of Little Mix, has become their biggest cheerleader.
“I look back and I’m amazed by us!” she says, her eyes lighting up. “I still watch our music videos and performances and wonder why we weren’t even bigger—because we were fucking incredible.”
Before releasing her first solo single, she revisited Little Mix’s entire catalog and cried. “I was just a young girl from South Shields who dreamed of being a singer, and I ended up in the best, coolest girl group ever,” she reflects. Now? “Now I get a bonus round—making my own music,” she says with a grin.
We meet in an East London photo studio as the 32-year-old prepares to drop her highly anticipated debut solo album. Thirlwall is relaxed and witty, dressed in a patchwork denim jacket and oversized cargo shorts—a contrast to her voluminous Diana Ross curls and the playful pink freckles applied for the shoot. Her voice is soft but animated, her Geordie accent slipping through, especially when she shares a wild story—which happens often.
Little Mix formed on The X Factor in 2011 and went on to sell 75 million records, becoming the third-biggest girl group of all time (after the Spice Girls and the Supremes, but ahead of Destiny’s Child). They were the first girl group to spend over 100 weeks in the UK Top 10 and, in 2021, the first to win a Brit Award for Best British Group. When Noel Gallagher dismissed them as “not in the same league as Oasis,” Thirlwall fired back: “That’s a shame, really. Because we’re the most successful girl group in the country, and he’s not even the most successful performer in his family.”
That same sharp wit and confidence have fueled her solo career, positioning her as Britain’s next big pop star. She credits drag queens in Benidorm as early influences—and it shows. Her solo work is gloriously over-the-top, embracing a “more is more” philosophy. If the kitchen sink isn’t in the mix, it’s only because she swapped it for a bathtub.
Four singles in, she’s soaring. Her debut, Angel of My Dreams—a chaotic, genre-hopping anthem about the highs and lows of fame—earned an Ivor Novello nomination. Her Brit Awards performance, complete with trapdoor drops, rapid costume changes, and giant angel wings, was hailed as a showstopper.
“Pop stars should be ambitious,” she says. “Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.” In an era of budget cuts, did her label hesitate when she pitched a five-act performance spectacle? “They know if they want me to be the next big pop girl, they’ve got to invest,” she jokes, feigning outrage. “I’m not a low-budget artist! Give me what I need!” Their gamble paid off when she won Best Pop Act.
Another standout moment came at Glastonbury, where she led the Woodsies stage in a defiant “Fuck you” chant—targeting, among others, the UK government’s policies.
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Her focus has been on reform, welfare cuts, speaking out against injustice, and opposing arms sales. Was she surprised by the strong online reaction? “I expected backlash from the right kind of people,” she says. “I saw a lot of comments like, ‘Your Glastonbury set was great until you got political,’ or ‘I used to be a fan until you got political.’ But, hun, you were never a real fan—I’ve always spoken up.”
Back in 2015, Thirlwall famously took over Little Mix’s official Twitter account to express her disappointment when Parliament voted to bomb ISIS targets in Syria. “I got in a bit of trouble for that,” she admits with a laugh. “But I felt strongly about it. I’m no political expert, but I’ve always cared. After 9/11, I saw the Islamophobia my grandad faced firsthand, and as someone with Arab heritage, I’ve noticed how people ignore the suffering in the Middle East. The funny part? We didn’t have personal Twitter accounts back then—we had to sign off tweets with our names. So I posted about Syria and ended it with ‘xxJadexx.’”
A fierce supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and a vocal advocate for Palestine, she has little patience for artists who avoid politics. “You can’t be a pop star and just look the other way. I heard Matty Healy say he doesn’t want to be political, which was disappointing. It’s easy to say that when you’re white, straight, and privileged. Good for you, hun!”
Before making chart-topping hits, Thirlwall was a pop music fanatic. Growing up in South Shields, she adored Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and Janet Jackson, covering her wardrobe doors with collages of their iconic looks. Her mum, Norma—a primary school business manager of Yemeni and Egyptian descent—bore a striking resemblance to her idol, Diana Ross. Young Jade even believed her mum was leading a double life, and Norma played along, pretending she was off to concerts when she was really heading to bingo.
Thirlwall has always been close to her mum, who’s with her in the studio today. Her upcoming album includes a song about Norma’s health struggles, including lupus. “She was really sick in the hospital, and I thought, how do I write a sad song we’ll still want to dance to?” Still, as a teen, she wished they had deeper conversations, especially about race. “I think my mum buried that part of herself to avoid confronting the racism she’d faced,” she says.
During the Black Lives Matter protests, they finally opened up. “Everything clicked for me—I understood what she’d been through. Where we’re from, we dealt with so many microaggressions, like being called the P-word, that we just got used to it. But then we realized—it’s not okay. My mum had to confront people she’d known for years. The right ones apologized and grew; the wrong ones were cut out. It was a big change for us.”
Despite her dreams of fame, Thirlwall was shy and tomboyish as a child. She faced racist bullying at her predominantly white school, and after her grandfather’s death when she was 13, she struggled with anorexia for years. When she auditioned for The X Factor at 18 in 2011, she had only recently left the hospital—doctors allowed her to compete on the condition she maintained a healthy weight.
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Was throwing herself at the mercy of Simon Cowell’s notoriously harsh judging panel a risky move for someone so vulnerable?
“In hindsight, if the show had done a proper mental health evaluation, they wouldn’t have let me on,” she says. Was there no psychological assessment? “It was very superficial. Judging by some of the people in that X Factor house, it wasn’t done properly. Bless them—through no fault of their own, some were clearly struggling with mental health. All the female contestants shared a bedroom, and one would get up in the middle of the night, arrange her wigs, and start performing like Britney Spears at 3 a.m. Or you’d wake up to the sound of her using a vibrator. We’d have meetings with lawyers, and someone who wasn’t in a good place would be picking at their feet and eating it in front of everyone. It was like, ‘Is this really the music industry?’”
Jesy leaving the group was incredibly painful. I wish it had been handled differently.
The surreal moments weren’t limited to the contestants. “At one point, I was taken to a room in the house to get a bikini wax—something I’d never had before.” Wait, I interrupt—why would a teenager need a bikini wax for The X Factor? “I don’t know! I just remember lying there with my legs spread, staring at the window, thinking, ‘I hope there’s no paparazzi outside.’”
For a show that thrives on emotional backstories, I’m surprised Jade’s struggle with anorexia wasn’t part of her onscreen “journey.” “I made sure it wasn’t,” she says. “They always tried to dig for a sob story, but I didn’t want that to define me. I was starting fresh. This was a huge opportunity—a chance to change my life.” She wanted a future beyond her eating disorder? “Exactly. Music was everything to me, and if staying healthy was the only way to make it happen, then that’s what I had to do. It was the ultimate motivation.”
Now, Jade says most of the negative comments she gets online are about her weight gain. That must be tough for someone recovering from anorexia. “I fight with myself daily not to try Ozempic,” she admits. “I don’t judge people who use it, but with my history of eating disorders, I don’t know where that path would lead me.”
She believes the trolling is an unfortunate side effect of reaching a wider audience. “Little Mix fans were all about empowerment and body positivity. Now I’m in my 30s and the healthiest I’ve ever been, but every time I post a photo, people comment, ‘She must be pregnant.’ The saddest part is that it’s usually women saying it. People remember me from the group years ago when I was extremely thin—back when I was in my early 20s and battling an eating disorder.”
Did she relapse during her time in the band? “I didn’t realize it then, but looking back at photos from times when I was really unhappy, I can see how dangerously thin I was. The pattern was there. Whenever I felt like things were out of my control, restricting food became my way of regaining control—in a really toxic way.”
Was there a time she felt particularly out of control? “In summer 2017, I was living in a flat in East London and having terrible night terrors. The nightmares were so disturbing—things too horrific to describe, dreams where I’d…”
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I was harming myself—forcing myself to stay awake by drinking coffee and blasting loud music. I’d perform at outdoor concerts after going days without sleep.
Eventually, my mum drove down from South Shields and took me to our family doctor, who prescribed antidepressants. “I felt so sad, and so unbearably guilty for feeling that way. I was terrified something terrible would happen with my mum’s lupus and I wouldn’t be there. I missed family funerals and things like that, and I started questioning if it was all worth it.”
She blinks hard, as if resetting her thoughts or pushing away a painful memory. “That’s when my mum decided she and her best friend would travel with us—it was so sweet. The two of them were like Absolutely Fabulous, driving me to each show, making sure I ate and stayed hydrated.”
Did she ever think about taking a break from the group? “If you stop working in this industry, everyone wants to know why, and I couldn’t deal with all the drama that would come with it. So I just kept going.”
Jade Thirlwall is quick to emphasize that she loved her time in Little Mix—the performances, her bandmates. But spending a decade in a meticulously crafted pop group isn’t for the faint-hearted. The band’s rise coincided with the explosion of Twitter and online fandoms, making them guinea pigs in an uncharted digital landscape. At the same time, paparazzi were still a menacing presence, not yet overshadowed by Instagram.
“We were 18 or 19, and the paps would try to take pictures up our skirts when we were getting into cars,” she says. “Once we were inside, they’d try to climb in with us to keep snapping photos. It was invasive for anyone, but especially for young girls.”
Did she ever feel scared? “Oh yeah, I was always scared,” she says casually, as if daily fear had just become part of life.
Over time, Thirlwall and fellow member Leigh-Anne Pinnock realized that, as women of color, they had to work harder to be noticed. At fan signings, some young fans would skip past Pinnock, the darkest-skinned member. “Then there was a track on our third album where the label suggested that Leigh-Anne and I not be on it at all—no vocals, nothing. When you’re young and hear that, of course you feel like absolute shit. We were working just as hard, we knew we could sing—why wouldn’t you want us on the track?”
Their bandmates Perrie Edwards and Jesy Nelson refused to record without them. “By the middle of our career, everyone knew not to try and separate us because we were so adamant about being treated equally. I truly believe that’s why we lasted so long.”
The band released five platinum albums in six years—a grueling pace alongside tours and promotions. Then, in 2020, everything stopped when the UK went into lockdown. “Covid changed everyone’s perspective on what they wanted. We already knew our next tour would be our last for a while, but Covid was a…”
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(Note: The original text cuts off mid-sentence, so the rewrite ends at the same point.)The departure of Jesy Nelson marked a turning point – it was the beginning of the end in terms of the group’s dynamic shift.
Nelson left Little Mix in December 2020, explaining, “I find the constant pressure of being in a girl group and living up to expectations very hard.” She had faced relentless online bullying about her appearance since the group formed and was hospitalized after an overdose in 2013. In 2019, she made a documentary, Odd One Out, about her struggles. In the film, Leigh-Anne Pinnock described watching Nelson change from a vibrant person to someone broken, saying, “It was horrible.” Thirlwall even admitted to creating a fake account to defend Nelson against online trolls.
By October 2020, COVID restrictions had eased enough for Little Mix to film their Sweet Melody music video. Nelson later said the shoot triggered a panic attack, leading to another hospital stay. “Then the girls spoke to my mum and said, ‘We think Jesy should step away now. She needs to focus on herself,’” Nelson told The Guardian in 2021. When asked if this matched her own memory, Thirlwall replied, “Some of it, yeah. Partly.”
It’s clearly a difficult topic for her, but I press for clarity. Thirlwall has previously said communication was “abruptly cut off.” If Nelson wanted to leave and the group supported her, why the sudden disconnect? “I can’t answer that because we weren’t the ones who did it,” Thirlwall says. Did they try reaching out afterward? “Yeah, there were attempts, and then… yeah.”
For the first time, she hesitates. Was it painful realizing their friendship couldn’t survive Nelson’s exit? “Incredibly painful. For all of us, that was the worst part. It took therapy and a lot of reflection to understand how something like that happens after so much time and love. I wish it had been handled differently—just sitting down and talking it out.”
“We loved Jesy like family—it wasn’t just about work,” she continues. “We wanted to protect her because we understood her trauma. I think we did our best, but suddenly we were down a member mid-album promo, with everyone asking questions. We don’t speak anymore, and some things shouldn’t have happened, but I still feel protective of her. Nobody fully grasps how complex it was—it wasn’t just someone leaving. Things built up over that last year, and deep down, I knew it was coming. I just wish it had happened… better.”
One positive outcome was the remaining members’ commitment to resolving conflicts. The band had undergone group therapy early in their career and returned to it as a trio. “We saw what happened when things went unaddressed, so we apologized and made sure we ended things on good terms. We wanted to finish still loving each other, so we did whatever it took.”
Thirlwall says their final tour (for now) was the most fun she’d ever had. “By then, we’d said everything we needed to, and it brought us closer. At the end, we asked, ‘Do we really want this to be the last one?’ The door isn’t closed. Even now, if one of us is struggling as solo artists…”
FAQS
### **FAQs About Jade Thirlwall: Anorexia, Ozempic, Activism & Life After Little Mix**
#### **1. What did Jade Thirlwall say about her struggles with anorexia?**
Jade opened up about battling anorexia in her teens, revealing how societal pressures and the music industry’s beauty standards contributed to her eating disorder. She has since advocated for better mental health awareness.
#### **2. Why is Jade against using weight-loss drugs like Ozempic?**
Jade has criticized the trend of celebrities using Ozempic for quick weight loss, calling it dangerous and promoting unhealthy body standards. She believes in body positivity and natural health over quick fixes.
#### **3. How does Jade Thirlwall feel about activism in pop music?**
Jade thinks pop stars should use their platform for activism, speaking out on issues like LGBTQ+ rights, racism, and mental health. She believes music and social change should go hand in hand.
#### **4. What is Jade doing now after Little Mix’s hiatus?**
Jade is working on solo music, collaborating with other artists, and focusing on advocacy work. She’s also appeared as a judge on *RuPaul’s Drag Race UK* and supports various charities.
#### **5. Did Jade’s experience in Little Mix influence her views on body image?**
Yes, being in Little Mix exposed her to intense scrutiny over her appearance. She’s spoken about how the industry’s expectations affected her self-esteem and why she now promotes body confidence.
#### **6. Has Jade given advice for others struggling with eating disorders?**
Yes, she encourages seeking professional help, surrounding yourself with supportive people, and rejecting toxic beauty standards. She emphasizes self-love and recovery over perfection.
#### **7. What are Jade’s thoughts on diet culture in the music industry?**
Jade has called out the industry’s obsession with thinness, saying it fuels eating disorders. She advocates for healthier, more inclusive standards for artists.
#### **8. Does Jade still keep in touch with her Little Mix bandmates?**
Yes, Jade, Perrie, and Leigh-Anne remain close friends and support each other’s solo projects. They’ve hinted at possible future collaborations.
#### **9. How does Jade balance her music career with activism?**
She integrates activism into her work—whether through
