I Have Found God and She Is From South Shields
Meet the Church of JADE. She won The X Factor with Little Mix, went solo, and made some of the most technically ambitious pop of the decade. Most people still cannot name a song.
Pop culture literacy is on absolute life support. Consider the following to be my shameless attempt to educate (or rather indoctrinate) the masses on what true pop bliss actually is.
I cannot estimate the number of times JADE has come up in conversation and friends asked, “Who’s JADE?” I would reply, “You know, the theatrical pop icon from Little Mix,” only to be met with a detached and blank, “Wait, what’s Little Mix?” Only the winners of X Factor 2011 and the biggest UK girl group since the Spice Girls… Even worse, at times when I wore JADE concert merch, people have confused her with Charli XCX. I assumed my friends were just uncultured… but the more I talk to people about pop culture, the more I realize I live in an elite echo chamber, one I think you should all join.
I am no stranger to discovering talent before the general public catches on: I was in the trenches fighting for Sabrina Carpenter and Charli XCX when people would not pay them dust. Now, suddenly everyone is bumpin’ that while wearing ungodly amounts of blush.
My prophecy: stanning JADE will soon be cool as well, but not in the same way.
In a world where pop stars are just… no longer hungry, there remain a few we must protect at all costs. Not to discredit anyone,1 but it is no secret that pop music has become a capitalist machine. Cultural theorists like Theodor Adorno spent decades writing about the “culture industry,” where mass pop reduces art to a standardized, superficial conveyor belt.2 Meanwhile, a few pop stars approach pop music with scientific precision.
Recently, ADÉLA declared she had studied pop stars like Ariana Grande. Smooth-brained X/Twitter users might assume that “studied” her merely means “replicating one’s art,” while it actually refers to dissecting the music sonically, visually, and structurally: in the same way someone in a conservatory would dissect Mozart’s concertos.
Because pop is so often written off as superficial, people fail to realize that some pop artists release work with as much technical depth as the classics taught in conservatories. I could gladly build a full semester course about Halsey’s album Manic (2020), while Yale and Harvard are already offering courses studying Beyoncé.
JADE is a dedicated student of pop culture: one can pinpoint her musical references like they would identify sequences of a DNA test, but none of it ever sounds like a cheap copy of someone else’s art. She metabolizes her influences and makes them entirely her own, whether she’s channeling late-70s Diana Ross diva glam on stage, throwing in manic UK garage and hyperpop tempo switches on “Angel of My Dreams,” or pairing theatrical choreography with ballroom influences on “Midnight Cowboy,” her tracks are always absolute pop perfection.
They are the best Michelin-grade pop fusion feast you could wish for, and best of all, they’re just so fun.
Yet, egoistically, I hope JADE doesn’t reach “sudden” levels of fame, the way Zara Larsson did through thirty-second-long TikTok sounds. While I contend musical artists do need fans, and art should arguably be accessible to everyone, I agree with Ethel Cain who, when calling out modern “stan culture,” describes a massive disconnect between genuinely engaging with an artist’s vision and mindlessly consuming it like fast-fashion content. In that same vein, Zara Larsson’s rise to mainstream ubiquity has inevitably invited a flood of superficial, TikTok-oriented fans who only know a couple of viral hooks, pack the barricade at shows, and stand completely lifeless during her concerts, ruining the vibe for diehard fans who came for deep cuts.
JADE’s current fans know every lyric and background hum to her songs, and recite her concert chants as they would a national anthem. They dissect the visuals of her music videos, construct borderline runway-ready outfits, and while the ambiance can get a little parasocial at times, they cultivate an avant-garde atmosphere. One of my favourite memories from her tour That’s Showbiz Baby was when she covered Madonna’s 1998 single “Frozen,” that moment made me realise she genuinely had shades of the Queen of Pop in her. While I don’t believe there ever can be another Madonna, nor do I believe JADE is trying to become one, the sheer ambition to be the best, and the standard of quality of the sonic experimentation she brings to the table operate in the same realm. The catch is that mainstream pop culture has largely moved away from this kind of grand and architectural pop.
Somewhere in recent years, we settled for the breezy, superficial Paris Hilton-style glitzy pop of the early 2000s. JADE is anything but that. Looking at the trajectory of her career, I believe she will settle in the same territory as FKA twigs: with a fanbase so powerful and engaged that labels spare no expense, give full creative control, and the freedom to pull off the kind of conceptual, high-budget art that other mainstream pop girlies could only dream of executing.
These visionaries only come once in a generation, and have dedicated, cult-like followings.
So consider this your formal invitation to the Church of JADE, where, as she preaches from the stage every night, everyone is welcome regardless of who they are, who they love, or what they look like3. And if pure spiritual pop enlightenment is not enough of a selling point: you’re literally getting a two-hour pop orgasm of a live show for thirty euros. Maybe it’s time to finally listen to your chronically online friends, step out of the algorithmic cookie cutter, and get on the JADE train while the sanctuary is still uncompromised.
1 Except maybe Audrey Hobert’s brother for butchering Robyn’s masterpieces in his latest Gap ad.
2 What many argue Katseye is today, but not too much on them.
3 Unless you listen to sombr’s music, in which case, please stay away.
Rezi Getsadze is a Marie Curie PhD candidate in endocrinology and diabetes at the University of Manchester, originally from Tbilisi, Georgia, and he spends the rest of his time dissecting pop culture by the same method. He has seen more than 200 artists live since 2015, and writes on Letterboxd and Instagram.