Tomorrow (18th October), JADE drops ‘Fantasy’, a third track in a solo ‘career’ that’s already marking her out as quite probably the most exciting prospect in British pop right now. Following up on the ‘OMG WHAT?!’ of debut ‘Angel Of My Dreams’ and the equally show stopping ‘Midnight Cowboy’, your fave Dorks (Hi – Ed) were asked if we’d like an exclusive first listen to the full version of JADE’s latest before it arrives. Quite obviously, we said yes – you’d not be reading this otherwise, durr – and maaaaaaate, she does not disappoint. Our pop megamind Abigail Firth has jotted down her first impressions. We’re all allowed to be very excited at this point.
“If you like it weird, I like it strange”, the chorus line from JADE’s latest single drop is a pointed summation of the pop mission she’s been on since making her solo outing earlier this summer. She always felt like the member of Little Mix most likely to embrace the weirder side of pop, confirming that suspicion when she released ‘Angel Of My Dreams’, the frank assessment of her love/hate relationship with the music industry that has more sonic twists, turns, ups and downs than Alton Towers. Follow up ‘Midnight Cowboy’ is a future club classic, indebted to the queer community who’ve embraced her as much as she has them.
What’s left behind is the freedom to be whatever pop star she wants
She did herself a favour by going full bonkers on the first two singles, no reference feels out of the question now. So on her third offering ‘Fantasy’, she touches Jessie Ware’s ‘What’s Your Pleasure’ and the most disco bits of Dua Lipa’s ‘Future Nostalgia’, with an undeniable air of Kylie Minogue. Its shimmering chorus is pure euphoria, verses packing a punch with the same talk-singing that defined ‘Angel Of My Dreams’, before that floaty head voice kicks back in for the pre-chorus. By the time the soaring bridge-cum-outro has finished, it feels a bit like you’ve got several browser tabs open, one playing Diana Ross, another Tove Lo, Nile Rogers has sprung up, and SG Lewis is somewhere outside doing a DJ set, all in the best way possible.
But ‘Fantasy’ isn’t the work of any of those people. It’s another mastermind collaboration between JADE, Mike Sabbath and Pablo Bowman, who worked on ‘Angel…’, if you needed any further indication that it’s a total knockout. Really, JADE just gets it. Clearly raised on a diet of gigantic pop but driven by determination to never do the obvious, ‘Fantasy’ sounds like the moment JADE puts the armour down, the frustration she let out on ‘Angel…’ is gone, and what’s left behind is the freedom to be whatever pop star she wants.
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