Doechii's Glastonbury slot is all part of her five-year plan
Others pinpoint her Tiny Desk Concert, released on YouTube two days later. The 15-minute set bursts with joie de vivre, simultaneously soulful and fiery, as the star rattles through jazzy, full-band recreations of her mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal. She won even more fans at the Grammys in March, where she won best rap album, making her just the third female artist to win in the category.In her speech, she spoke directly to young, black, queer women like her: "Don't allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you, to tell you that you can't be here, that you're too dark or that you're not smart enough or that you're too dramatic or you're too loud."She capped off her win with an ultra-physical performance that referenced Michael Jackson, Missy Elliott and Bob Fosse - and ended with her pulling the splits while being held aloft by five male dancers. With three "star-is-born" performances in just four months, Doechii became the most talked-about new rapper of her generation... just like she planned. So where did it all start?
Doechii was born Jaylah Ji'mya Hickmon in Tampa, Florida and raised in a "heavily Christian" single-parent household by her mother, Celesia Moore.A studious kid who loved writing poetry, she invented her alter-ego at the age of 11, after being viciously bullied in school."I was in a position where I thought about killing myself because the bullying was so bad," she told Dazed magazine in February."Then I had this realisation: I'm not gonna do that, because then they're gonna all get a chance to live and I'm gonna be the one dead."Overnight, her attitude shifted."Jaylah might've been getting bullied, but I decided Doechii wouldn't stand for that," she recalled in an interview with Vulture. "And then," she told The Breakfast Club, "I went to school in a tutu and I started doing music."
As a teenager, she spent four years at Tampa's Howard W. Blake School of the Arts, after winning a place on the choral programme by performing Etta James' At Last. The school unlocked her creativity, allowing her to take classes in everything from nail design and hair, to ballet, tap, cheerleading and stage production. However, it was gymnastics that left the biggest impression."The way that gymnasts train is really, really tough. It's brutal and hard and difficult," she told Gay Times. "But at some point in my gymnastic career I learnt how to embrace and really love pain. To view pain as me getting stronger and better. That caused a deep discipline that has never left me."The school also helped the teenager accept her sexuality."Even though I was aware [that I was queer], I didn't feel as comfortable until I started surrounding myself with more gay friends at my school. "Once I had gay friends it was like, 'OK, I can be myself, I'm good, I can feel safe, this is normal, I'm fine.' I have those same friends today and will have them for life."That's not all they gave her: Those same friends convinced Doechii to give up her ambitions of becoming a chorister, and start writing and releasing her own music.
Initially called iamdoechii, she uploaded her first song to Soundcloud in 2016, and released her debut single Girls two years later. It already bore the hallmarks of her best work: Rhythmically and lyrically dextrous, and chock full of personality. "Taking nudes / None of them for you," she chided over a mellow electric piano, before the beat switched up and her rapping became more frenetic. By the closing bars, she barely had time catch breath as she listed her accomplishments. "Making money from my phone, huh / Doechii finally in her zone."The lines were more prophecy than reality. Doechii had a solid following on YouTube, but she was still working at Zara to make ends meet. In 2019, she was booked for a showcase in New York City and hopped on a bus - without the money for her return trip. "The night after, I slept at a McDonald's," she recalled in a 2022 interview. "And then I had to call one of my mom's friends... and, like, beg her to let me sleep at her house. And I ended up living there until I got back on my feet."
'Drowning in vices'
Things started to turn around with the release of 2020's Yucky Blucky Fruitcake, named after Junie B. Jones's children's book, in which Doechii sketched out her own childhood.According to the lyrics, she was precocious ("I try to act smart 'cause I want a lot of friends"), competitive ("I get a little violent when I play the game of tag") and frequently broke ("My momma used stamps 'cause she need a little help").The song marked a breakthrough in her writing."I was lacking this sense of vulnerability and honesty in my music," she told Billboard, until "I learned accuracy and just saying exactly what it is, like on Lucky Blucky Fruitcake".The song went viral, winning her a record deal with Top Dawg Entertainment - the label that launched Kendrick Lamar and SZA. She followed it up with the effortlessly hooky Persuasive, earning praise from SZA (who jumped on a remix) and former President Barack Obama."I can't imagine Obama just jamming my song," she exclaimed. "I just don't believe it, but if he really does – that's crazy."
Doechii next collaborated with Kodak Black on the 2023 single What It Is (Block Boy), earning her first Top 40 hit. Then, everything stalled. Subsequent singles flopped, and Doechii was, as she later wrote on social media, "drowning in my own vices, battling differences with my label and a creative numbness that broke me".Initially, her Alligator Bites Never Heal mixtape looked set to repeat the pattern. Released last August, it entered the US charts at number 117 and vanished a week later.But reviews were ecstatic. Critics loved the acerbic, funny lyrics, that saw Doechii unpack the trials and tribulations of the last two years; and heaped praise on bars that recalled greats such as Q-Tip, Lauryn Hill and Slick Rick, while keeping pace with contemporaries like Kendrick Lamar. After a period dominated by the mumbled bars of Souncloud rap, her precision was a breath of fresh air."One of the year's most fully-realized breakout albums," wrote Rolling Stone. "If this is the sound of Doechii pushing against constraints, a little friction might not be the worst thing," added Pitchfork.
As word spread, she was booked to play the Colbert show and Tiny Desk. Those performances lit a rocket under her career. By April, Alligator had chomped into the US Top 10, and the UK Top 40. Around the same time, she bowed to fan pressure by releasing her 2019 YouTube song, Anxiety, a pop-rap crossover based on a sample of Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know. With an eye-catching video that recreated a full-on panic attack, it hit number three in the UK, and even earned Doechii a citation in medical journal Psychology Today."The song and accompanying video work so well in showing exactly how anxiety feels in our bodies and minds," wrote Professor Sandra Chafouleas. "Think about quick and short breaths, racing thoughts, and worrying about things that haven't happened yet. Anxiety feels like 'Anxiety' sounds, with brilliant mirroring of how the experience can hijack us."Since then, Doechii's been hard at work on her debut album. There'd been rumours she'd release it in time for her Glastonbury slot on Saturday night, but perfectionists have got to perfect. At the time of writing, she's still in the studio.Speaking to Dazed, she dropped a few hints of what's in store. "In Alligator Bites Never Heals, the archetype was a student of hip-hop. For this next project, I'm thinking about how this student develops. "Who does she develop into? What has she learned? I'm still unpacking how that character develops into this next project."Despite the delay, Doechii's headline set remains one of Glastonbury's biggest draws. She might only be performing for 45 minutes, but she'll make every one of them count.As the star boasted on her single Nosebleeds: "Will she ever lose? Man, I guess we'll never know."
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The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘I am tough' – Emma Raducanu on legacy of US Open win, stalking ordeal and why therapy won't help her
For four arduous years, so much of Emma Raducanu's life has played out in public. Every decision relating to her career has been dissected and debated. The most banal details surrounding her personal life have been transfigured into headline news. In order to find herself on and off the tennis court, Raducanu has had to learn how to tune out the noise, which at times can be deafening. Only one month ago at Wimbledon, the discourse surrounding the 22-year-old reached diabolical lows. Even though her on-court performances were strong, it was impossible to escape the speculation surrounding her personal life. In the bowels of Center Court at the Cincinnati Open, I offer my own blunt perspective: I have never cringed as much as I did while watching people trying to pry into her romantic relationships at the All England Club. 'Yeah, and Cam's questions, too,' Raducanu responds, laughing. 'That was terrible. Terrible.' She was referring to her compatriot Cameron Norrie's post-match press conference, when a reporter asked him whether he was dating Raducanu. Norrie, who was being supported in his player box that day by his long-term partner, was as baffled as he was bemused. For Raducanu, though, such brazen intrusiveness from strangers has simply become part of her everyday life. 'I know, I know,' she says, smiling. 'I guess it comes with the territory, people being so curious. I think they're more curious about this news than any tennis results and tennis news. But I just keep to myself, my private life to one side. It's always funny when people try to find something out, but I try not to read into it so much.' That curiosity is not isolated to the internet and tabloids. When Raducanu is out in London, paparazzi will find her, even when she is doing nothing more than stepping on to a 345 bus somewhere in Wandsworth. 'It's really freaky, because you don't know they're there. And then you'll see a photo of yourself the next day, and you'll be like: 'There's no way they were there,'' she says. Considering her well-documented encounters with stalkers – one was arrested and handed a five-year restraining order after stealing items from her front door in 2021 and another fixated person followed her across four different countries earlier this year – Raducanu has genuine concerns regarding her safety: 'After the Dubai incident, that was probably the worst [public attention] I've had,' she says. 'I remember straight afterwards, I found it very difficult going out. I definitely had a bit of a leftover lag effect. But I've been a lot more astute, a lot more, I'd say, safe and I have someone with me. I don't really go out on my own as much. No solo walks. Just always having someone watching my back.' Everything leads back to those three fateful weeks at the US Open in the summer of 2021, where Raducanu became the first qualifier to win a grand slam title in the open era. The spoils of victory were significant but Raducanu's rapid success yielded considerable challenges. Along with the difficult results and constant criticism, her body constantly betrayed her. In 2023, after struggling physically for a long time, she underwent surgeries on both wrists and her left ankle. While she tried to prove herself on the court, Raducanu says, people within her team would tell her she was not tough. 'I was obviously, like: 'Oh, no, I am tough enough,'' she says. 'It wasn't good to hear, because I always prided myself on being a hard worker and being tough. And I believe I am. I actually think it was more the people around me that were incorrect, and it led me to having three surgeries and double wrist surgery. I was overtraining and just covering it up, not saying I was in pain, even when I was. So it was really tough to hear. But as I've grown with experience, I kind of realised my body a bit more and trusted myself a bit more.' Mentally, things were even more challenging. As she failed to follow up her breakthrough victory with similar results, there were times when her mind twisted her US Open triumph into a negative memory, the source of her struggles. It was not until this year that she understood how to focus on her improvement and daily work, however gradual, rather than comparing every result with the 2021 US Open. Still, it remains a work in progress. 'It's [comparisons to the US Open] something that never fully leaves you,' Raducanu says. 'I think it's been four years now, I don't think it's fully gone away. Maybe in a few years, maybe when I'm older, more mature, but it's hard to put that aside completely. It's always in the back of your mind, but it's more just being aware of those thoughts and then not letting it crash your day or ruin the work that you're doing, and bringing it back to what I'm doing now, and the process.' Sign up to The Recap The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend's action after newsletter promotion Considering her many difficulties, an obvious question is whether sports psychology or therapy have been a part of her life over the past few years. 'I've tried. I've tried,' she says. 'I've obviously been recommended to do it a lot, with what I went through. It was something that not many people, well actually, no one has gone through, which is probably the reason I did two sessions and I stopped. I was like: 'Look, these guys, they don't relate.' And, to be honest, no other athlete has done what I've done, so I don't know why I'm taking advice from them. So I was like: 'OK, well, the only person who can help me is myself.'' For a long time the four defining cities of Raducanu's life were listed in her biographies across her social media platforms. Her parents, Ion and Renee, originally come from Bucharest, Romania, and Shenyang, China, respectively while she was born in Toronto, Canada, and grew up in London, England. Her mother's solo immigration from China to Canada has been an inspirational tale throughout her life. 'I would say it's funny when people ask where you're from,' she says. 'Obviously, I feel British. I've grown up there, But there are certain things, the way I think, I don't think I am completely. So you have a little question about your identity. But I try not to read too much into it and try to just take the best from all the different worlds that I've been exposed to and grown up in.' Regardless of the subject at hand, Raducanu frequently notes the support and significance of her parents. She describes her upbringing as rigid and strict, but their tough love has made her the person she is today. 'I was always brought up with really high standards, high expectations of myself, not much sympathy,' says Raducanu. 'So when I was younger, that was tough, and even now. But I think it really shaped me to be the player I am, the person I am; pretty down to earth. They never got impressed by anything glitzy or high or anything.' Both Raducanu's parents worked in finance and they passed on their numerical, logical mindsets. Over the past few years, however, part of her evolution as an adult has been understanding herself as a person. Her injury layoff in 2023, which initially seemed like a catastrophe, turned out to be essential for her personal development. Raducanu spent her time away from tennis travelling, including a long trip to China, trying different hobbies and gradually learning more about herself. She learned that she is also creative, which has significantly influenced her playing style on the court. 'I kind of discovered the more artistic side – the piano, the painting, the reading, the philosophy, all of those things,' she says. 'I really think it opened my eyes to another world. Now I'm kind of seeing how I can find an area where those two intersect, and have the creative side but also have the quantitative side.' With age and experience, Raducanu also has a greater understanding of her preferences when making general decisions. While discussing her decision making, Raducanu's mind shifts to another source of criticism: her coaching history. 'I'm a lot more clear on what I do and don't like,' she says. 'The experiences that I've had with different coaches … People love to say I've had so many different coaches but if I went into the details of a lot of them, people would not be saying the same thing. I just don't do that, because I don't want to 'out' these people. So I keep it to myself.' Is it ever tempting? 'When you see things like: 'Oh, Emma on her ninth coach', I'm like: 'Guys, come on.' Certain ones don't count. If you've had a trial, you don't have to carry on after the trial. A few have been trials, a few have been other situations. I just try and take the high road,' she says. Then she laughs. 'And try to do what the royal family would do.' After years of rolling with the punches and gradually coming to understand herself, Raducanu seems to finally be in a positive place again. She speaks effusively about the great enjoyment she has found in her consistent daily work and she has thrown herself into becoming the best player she can be each day. Raducanu's results are reflective of that shift and her ranking is on the rise. Her time in Cincinnati, her first week with her new coach, Francisco Roig, ended with a colossal three-hour battle with Aryna Sabalenka, the world No 1, where she narrowly lost 7-6 (5) in the final set. Over the next few days, she will return to New York for the US Open more self-assured than she has been since she won the title. Our second conversation ends with a final question on Raducanu's ambitions for the next few years beyond her results. After a beat, she shrugs. The hope, she says, is that the passion and joy she now feels each day about her daily work will endure. 'I want to continue for the next few years to just keep enjoying because I would rather not do anything else or be anywhere else,' she says. 'I see my friends, like, somewhere in the south of France, and they're chilling on a boat or whatever, and I'm just like: 'OK, well, it looks amazing,' but when I'm putting in double session practices with the people around laughing, that fills me up so much more. So I'm really happy to have gotten to this place and [I want] to just continue that.'
The Independent
39 minutes ago
- The Independent
RushTok backlash: Why sororities aren't letting prospects post
Kylan Darnell became an overnight celebrity in the TikTok niche that documents the glitzy, ritualistic recruitment process for sororities. As a 21-year-old rising senior four years later, she's taking more of her sorority life offline. Darnell has until now been the embodiment of RushTok, a week-long marathon that has teens at schools around the country meticulously documenting their efforts to land a cherished spot in a sorority during the colorful, girly and enigmatic recruitment process known as rush week. Reactions to the content that once catapulted her to fame — depicting her life as a Zeta Tau Alpha member at the University of Alabama — had become so negative that it was affecting her mental health, she said. 'This year it was just like a whole different level of hate," Darnell said. Citing a need to protect prospects from harassment, many sororities have made similar moves, issuing a de facto ban against talking to the press or posting on social media during rush week at Alabama, where almost 13,000 students participate in the nation's largest on-campus Greek life. A centuries-old tradition Across the country, rush is typically a 10-day event where 'prospective new members' try out sororities through rounds of activities prescribing a strict slate of outfits and etiquette. In the lead-up, girls often submit "social resumes" and letters of recommendation from sorority alums. Participation often requires an eye-opening price tag. After spending sometimes tens of thousands of dollars on outfits, makeup and plane tickets, each of this week's 2,600 recruits paid $550 to participate. It's non-refundable if they don't get picked. If accepted, they'll pay an average $8,400 a semester to live in the sorority house, or $4,100 if they live elsewhere, according to the Alabama Panhellenic Association. The pressure can be so intense that an industry of consultants now helps girls navigate the often mysterious criteria for landing a desired sorority. Some charge up to $10,000 for months of services that can begin in high school. Throughout rush, many events are invite-only. At any point, girls can get a dreaded call informing them they've been dropped — that a sorority is no longer interested in letting them join. Matches are finally made on bid day as prospects rank top choices and sororities make offers. Morgan Cadenhead, now 20, gained such an audience on RushTok despite being dropped that she covered most of her tuition with income from social media. Then came the social cost as she was slammed online for criticizing Greek life. Now the marketing major — featured on Lifetime's 'Sorority Mom's Guide to Rush!' — said she's looking for offline work. A zealous TikTok following A fixation with rush was renewed when sororities resumed in-person recruiting after the pandemic. Social media became flooded with 'outfit of the day' and 'get ready with me' videos showing sorority members and recruits in well-lit rooms, sometimes flaunting exorbitantly priced designer wear or pieces purchased on Amazon, always precisely curated. Alabama's Greek life got attention before, when its traditionally white sororities racially integrated, accepting their first Black members in 2013. Targeted by protests following allegations of racial discrimination, the university agreed with the Justice Department in 2016 to encourage diversity. Today, Black students outside of traditionally Black sororities and fraternities represent 2% of the total Greek membership, the university website says. Meanwhile, online attention to rush has led to books, a polarizing documentary and the reality television series, widening the appeal of sororities in the South in particular, according to Lorie Stefaneli, a New York City-based consultant who flies to Tuscaloosa each year for rush. Stefaneli coaches girls from around the country, and about a third of her clients enroll at Alabama. She says many are drawn by the vibrant depictions of sisterhood, showing female friendships that can ensure girls feel seen and supported. 'That's the reason why a lot of them want to go to Alabama, is because they see it on TikTok,' Stefaneli said. Recruits told to stop posting — or else If they gain enough followers to become social influencers, RushTok participants can earn ad revenue and brand deals. Darnell's posts brought her financial independence, more than covering the $58,000 it costs her annually to attend Alabama from out-of-state. Rush can be fun and help girls build confidence, but it's also an 'emotional rollercoaster,' especially for girls who feel they need to reveal themselves to a massive audience, Stefaneli said. She answers phone calls at all hours of the night during rush week. 'I'm literally a therapist, I'm talking these girls down from a ledge,' she said. Numerous incoming freshmen told The Associated Press this week that they were expressly prohibited from speaking with the media or even posting about rush at Alabama. Darnell said the most selective 'Old Row' houses will automatically drop prospects who do. 'Now a lot of girls just come to the university to be influencers,' she said. 'It kind of gets in the way of sisterhood.' Some incoming freshmen — including Darnell's 19-year-old sister Izzy, with a vast social media following of her own — have chosen to post anyway, satisfying a demand that can reach millions of views within days. Izzy Darnell — who wouldn't share her choices for sorority ahead of Saturday's bid day — said her older sister's acumen has equipped her to navigate criticism and potentially predatory business deals. But she worries about how other girls might handle the fame and money. 'I just fear what some girls will do because they think they have to,' Izzy Darnell said.
The Guardian
39 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘I have a daily battle with myself not to go on Ozempic': Jade Thirlwall on anorexia, protest in pop and life after Little Mix
It's customary for former girlband members to shun their manufactured roots the second they go solo. But now that Jade Thirlwall is no longer a member of Little Mix, she's become their biggest fan. 'I look back and I'm gagged at us!' she tells me, eyes wide with delight. 'I still watch our music videos or performances and wonder how we weren't even bigger, because we were fucking amazing. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. 'Before I released my first solo song, I listened to Little Mix's entire discography and cried. I was this young lass from South Shields who just wanted to make it as a singer, and I went on to be in the best, coolest girlband ever.' And now? 'Now I get to have a bonus round, doing my own songs,' she beams. We meet in an east London photo studio as the 32-year-old prepares to release her much-trumpeted debut solo album. Thirlwall is relaxed, funny company, in a patchwork denim jacket and oversized cargo shorts, slightly incongruous against the bouncing Diana Ross curls and frosting of bright pink freckles applied for our shoot. She's softly spoken, her voice retaining its geordie dialect and rising in pitch whenever she's relaying an astonishing anecdote – which is often. Little Mix formed during the eighth series of The X Factor in 2011 and went on to sell 75m records, become the third-biggest girlband of all time (behind the Spice Girls and the Supremes, ahead of Destiny's Child) and the first to spend more than 100 weeks inside the UK top 10. In 2021, they were the first girlband to win the Brit award for best British group. When Noel Gallagher claimed that they were 'not in the same league as Oasis', who had won in 1996, Thirlwall retorted that it was 'a shame, really. Because we are definitely the most successful girl group in the country, but he's not even the most successful performer in his family.' This wit and swagger has been expertly parlayed into a solo career that promises to make Thirlwall Britain's next homegrown superstar. She tells me that some of her earliest artistic influences were the drag queens of Benidorm and – in the best possible way – it shows. Her solo music and visuals are delightfully melodramatic, embracing a more-is-more approach that implies if the kitchen sink is missing, it's only because she decided to throw in a bathtub instead. Four singles in, she's flying. Her debut, Angel of My Dreams (a maximalist treatise on the agonies and ecstasies of pop fame that packs more genres than the average person's Spotify Wrapped into three minutes and 17 seconds), was nominated for an Ivor Novello award. When she performed it at the Brit awards – dropping through a double-height trapdoor and embarking on a dizzying succession of costume changes and dance breaks before taking flight in a pair of giant angel wings – this publication described her as having stolen the show. 'I think you should be ambitious as a pop star,' she says today. 'You shouldn't give yourself a ceiling.' In an era of reduced budgets and tightened belts, was it easy to convince her record company to let her stage an episodic performance told in five acts? 'They understand that if they want me to be the next big pop girlie, then they have to put their hand in their pocket.' She adopts a mock scandalised tone: 'I'm not a low‑budget artist! Give me what I need!' Their investment was rewarded when Thirlwall won best pop act. Another headline-generating performance followed, this time at Glastonbury festival, where Thirlwall led the Woodsies stage in a chant of 'Fuck you' to, among other things, Reform, welfare cuts, silencing protest and selling arms. Was she surprised at the heated online reaction? 'I was ready for a backlash from the right kind of people,' she says. 'I saw a lot of people saying 'Your Glastonbury set was really good until you got political' or 'I used to be a fan of yours until you got political'. But, hun, you were never a fan, because I've always piped up.' Memorably, back in 2015, Thirlwall hijacked the official Little Mix Twitter account to tweet that she was 'truly saddened and ashamed' by parliament voting to bomb Isil targets in Syria. 'I got in a bit of trouble for that,' she concedes cheerfully. 'But I felt very passionate about it. I'm no expert in politics but I've always taken an interest. Around 9/11 I saw first‑hand the Islamophobia that my grandad experienced, and as someone of Arab heritage I've seen people turning a blind eye to the Middle Eastern tragedy. What's quite funny is that we didn't have individual Twitter accounts, and we each had to sign off tweets from the Little Mix account with our name. So I did my tweet about Syria and ended it with 'xxJadexx''. A stalwart defender of LGBTQ+ rights and a vocal advocate for a free Palestine, she is disparaging of artists who opt out of politics. 'I don't think you can be a pop artist and cover your eyes. I saw Matty Healy say that he doesn't want to be political, which I found disappointing. It's very easy for someone who's white and straight and very privileged to say that. Good for you, hun!' Before Thirlwall began making weapons-grade bangers, she was a student of pop music. Born in South Shields, she was obsessed with Madonna, Kylie and Janet Jackson, papering her wardrobe doors with moodboards of their most iconic looks. Her mum, Norma, a primary school business manager of Yemeni and Egyptian descent, had the look of Jade's ultimate idol Diana Ross – and for a time young Jade believed her mum to be living a double life. Norma encouraged the fantasy, claiming that she was going to play concerts when, in fact, she was off down the bingo hall. Thirlwall was always close to her mum; Norma's at the studio with us today, and there's a song on the forthcoming album about her mum's ill health, which includes lupus ('She was really poorly in hospital and I thought: how can I write a really sad song that we're all going to want to shake our tits to?'). Still, as a teenager Thirlwall felt frustrated that they rarely had deep conversations, and race wasn't discussed. 'I think my mam had suppressed that part of herself because she didn't want to confront the trauma of her experiences of racism,' she says. During the Black Lives Matter protests, they began sharing stories and 'everything clicked into place for me and I had a new understanding and empathy for what she'd been through. Where we're from there were so many microaggressions, people calling us the P-word, that we were used to it. And in that moment we had to be like, actually it's not OK for people to call us those things. My mam had to confront people she'd known most of her life. The right people apologise and better themselves, and you get rid of the wrong people. It was a big change for us.' Despite her dreams of stardom, as a child Thirlwall was shy and tomboyish. She was a victim of racist bullying at her overwhelmingly white secondary school. Coupled with the death of her beloved maternal grandfather when she was 13, this provided the catalyst, she says, for a years-long fight with anorexia. When she successfully auditioned for The X Factor aged 18 in 2011, it was just a few months after having been discharged from hospital, with doctors allowing her to compete on the proviso that she maintained a healthy weight. Wasn't throwing herself at the mercy of Simon Cowell's notoriously brutal juggernaut a risky strategy for someone so vulnerable? 'In retrospect, if the show had done a proper mental health assessment, then they wouldn't have let me on,' she says. Was there not a psych test? 'It was very surface. 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 of those people were mentally unwell. All of the female contestants slept in the same bedroom, and one of them would get up, put all her wigs out and start doing a Britney Spears performance at three in the morning. Or you'd be woken up by the sound of her using her vibrator in the middle of the night. We'd have a meeting with lawyers and someone who was obviously not in the best headspace would be picking their feet and eating it in front of everyone. It was like, 'Is this the music industry?'' It wasn't only the contestants enacting surreal stunts. 'At one point I got led to a room in the house to get my foof waxed, which I'd never had before.' Hang on, I interrupt, why would a teenager need a bikini wax to appear on The X Factor? 'I don't know! I just remember lying with my legs akimbo, looking up at the window, thinking, 'I hope there's not a pap there.'' For a show powered by tragic backstories, I'm surprised that Thirlwall's anorexia wasn't made part of her onscreen 'journey'. 'I made sure it wasn't,' she says. 'They'd always try to fish for a sob story, but I didn't want that to be my identity. I was starting afresh. I thought, OK, this is a huge opportunity for me, it's a chance to change my life.' She wanted a future bigger than her eating disorder? 'Exactly. I wanted to do music more than anything, and if the only way to achieve that was to be healthy, that's what I had to do. It was the ultimate motivation.' These days, Thirlwall says that most of the negative comments she receives online are about her putting on weight. That must be incredibly difficult for a recovering anorexic? 'I have a daily battle with myself not to go on Ozempic,' she says. 'I don't judge people that do, but because I have a history of eating disorders, I don't know where taking something like that would end for me.' She believes that the trolling is a depressing byproduct of reaching a broader audience. 'Little Mix fans were all about empowerment and celebrating your body however you look. Now I'm in my 30s and the healthiest I've ever been, but every time I post a picture, there are comments saying, 'She must be pregnant.' The sad thing is that it's usually women. But people are used to seeing me in a group environment five or 10 years ago when I was stick-thin because I was in my early 20s with an eating disorder.' Did she relapse while she was in the band? 'I didn't think it at the time, but when I look back at photos of periods when I was quite unhappy, I think, wow, girlie, you were very, very thin. The pattern was there. Historically, if I've ever felt that something is out of my control, then restricting food has been a means of controlling my life in a very toxic way.' Can she recall a time when she felt particularly out of control? 'In summer 2017 I was living in a flat in east London and having really bad night terrors. I'd have such disturbing nightmares – things that are too horrific to say, dreams where I'd be harming myself – that I'd force myself to stay awake by drinking coffee and playing loud music. I'd be going to perform at outdoor concerts having not slept for days.' Eventually her mum drove down from South Shields and took her home to the family doctor, who prescribed antidepressants. 'I felt so sad, and so horrendously guilty for feeling sad. I had the fear that something awful would happen with my mam's lupus and I wouldn't be there. I missed family funerals and things like that, and wondered if it was all worth it.' She executes a hard blink, as if resetting her thoughts, or perhaps banishing a troubling one. 'That's when my mam decided that her and her best mate would come on the road with us – it was so cute. The pair of them like Ab Fab, driving me to each venue, making sure I was fed and watered.' Did she ever consider taking a break from the group? 'If you stop working in this business, then everybody wants to know why, and I couldn't be arsed for everything that came with that. So I kept it moving.' Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion Thirlwall is keen to stress that she loved her time in Little Mix – loved performing, loved her bandmates. But being in a precision-engineered pop group for 10 years is not for the delicate. The band's launch coincided with the advent of Twitter and online fandoms, meaning that the girls found themselves acting as guinea pigs in a strange new land that was yet to be mapped. At the same time, the paparazzi were still a hostile force, not yet rendered obsolete by Instagram. 'We were 18 or 19 and the paps would be trying to get pictures up our skirts when we were getting into cars,' she says. 'Once we were in the car, they'd try and get in with us to carry on taking pictures, which would be invasive for anyone, but especially young girls.' Did she ever feel scared? 'Oh yeah, I was always scared,' she says with a casual air that suggests she long ago resigned herself to daily terror being the natural order of things. Over time, Thirlwall and fellow member Leigh-Anne Pinnock 'understood that as women of colour we had to work a bit harder to be noticed'. At signings, young fans would skip past Pinnock, the darkest-skinned member of the group. 'Then there was a track on our third album where the label suggested that me and Leigh-Anne not be on a song – at all. No backing vocals, nothing. Obviously when you're a young woman and you're told that, you're going to feel like utter shit. We're working just as hard, we know we can sing – what do you mean you don't want us on the track?' Their bandmates Perrie Edwards and Jesy Nelson refused to appear without them. 'By halfway through our career, everyone knew not to try and separate us because we were so headstrong about always being equal. I do believe that's the main reason we lasted so long.' The band released five platinum albums in six years, a relentless pace when accompanied by the requisite tours and promotional duties. Then, in 2020, the machine ground to a halt when the UK went into lockdown. 'When Covid happened it shifted everyone's perspective on what they wanted. We already knew that our next tour would be the last for a while, but Covid was a bit of a catalyst – it was the beginning of the end in terms of the obvious dynamic shift.' She's referring to the departure of Nelson, who left the band in December 2020, saying, 'I find the constant pressure of being in a girl group and living up to expectations very hard.' Nelson had been relentlessly trolled for her appearance since the advent of the group, and was hospitalised after taking an overdose in 2013. In 2019 she made a documentary called Odd One Out about these struggles. In the film, Thirlwall is shown saying, 'We just had to watch this amazing, funny person become like a broken doll. It was horrible.' She later revealed that she had created a burner account on MailOnline to fire back at Nelson's trolls. In October 2020 restrictions were eased enough to allow Little Mix to film their Sweet Melody music video. By Nelson's account, the shoot triggered a panic attack and she ended up back in hospital. 'Then the girls spoke to Mum and said, 'We think Jesy should come out of this now. She has to look after herself,'' Nelson told the Guardian in 2021. Does that fit Thirlwall's own recollection? 'Some of it, yeah. Partly.' It's obviously not a topic that she wants to dwell on, but I'm keen to understand what happened. Thirlwall has said elsewhere that the contact was 'abruptly cut off'. Why so, if it was a mutual decision, with Nelson wanting to leave and the rest of the group supporting her decision? 'I can't answer that question because we weren't the ones that did it.' Were there any attempts made to get in touch with Nelson after she'd left? 'Yeah, there were, and then … yeah.' For the first time our conversation stalls. Was it painful to realise that their friendship couldn't survive Nelson leaving the group? 'It was incredibly painful. For all of us that was the worst part, and it's taken a lot of understanding and therapy and all those things to work out how that can happen when you've devoted so much time and love to someone. My biggest wish for that whole period is that it was handled differently. I just would've loved us to all sit and chat about it. 'We absolutely adored Jesy like family – it wasn't just work,' she continues. 'We all wanted to protect her, because we understood that trauma there and what she'd been through. I think we handled it as best as we could. All of a sudden we were a member short in the middle of album promo, with everyone asking what was going on. Obviously we don't speak any more, and things happened that I don't think should have, but I still do feel an element of protection towards Jesy. Nobody fully understands how complex the whole thing was – it wasn't just a case of someone wanting to leave. Numerous things built up in the last year and in the back of my mind I knew it was going to happen. I'd just like for it to have happened in a … better way.' One positive to come from Nelson's departure was the remaining members' determination to resolve any lingering conflicts. The band had been in group therapy at the start of their career, and re-entered as a trio. 'We'd seen what happened when we didn't air things out and so there were apologies between the three of us. We all knew that we really wanted to end things on a high, still adoring each other, so we'd do whatever we had to do to achieve that.' Thirlwall says that the group's final – for now – tour was the most fun she'd ever had. 'Anything we'd wanted to say had been said by that point and we loved each other more for it, and had more of an understanding of each other. At the end of the tour we were like, 'Do we really want this to be the last one?' It's definitely not a closed door. Even now if one of us is having a bad day as a solo artist, we're like, 'Hello, knock, knock, is it time?!' Not yet, but it will happen.' For now, Thirlwall is laser-focused on her solo career. While Little Mix worked to a rough template – empowering songs about loving your mates and forgetting useless boyfriends – she has enjoyed exploring more nuanced themes on her album. Singles Angel of My Dreams and It Girl are inspired by her experiences in the music industry. (The former includes the lyric 'Selling my soul to a psycho', seemingly a reference to Cowell's record label, Syco, which Little Mix were signed to until 2018. It Girl includes the lyrics 'I'm not your baby doll … This bitch can't be controlled'.) 'I wanted to be tongue-in-cheek and admit that I love the game and I hate it at the same time,' she says. 'It was a way to give an honest account of my experiences without being 'woe is me'.' Several of the tracks are about her relationship with Rizzle Kicks singer Jordan Stephens. 'When you're a successful woman it's really hard to find someone who isn't intimidated by you or jealous of that,' she says. 'When I met Jordan I wasn't looking for anyone. Me and my best friend, Holly, were in lockdown together, and we promised ourselves a humongous dick hunt when it was over.' After being introduced to Stephens by a mutual friend, and bored of doing Zoom interviews, Thirlwall suggested they liven things up by dressing in business suits and asking each other job interview questions for their first online date. ('One of mine was, 'Do you clap when the plane lands?' because that's a big ick for me.') After their first in-person meetup, in Greenwich park, 'I came home to Holly and was like, I'm so sorry, the dick hunt is over. She was fuming.' Stephens recently published a memoir detailing his experiences of ADHD, and Thirlwall says dating someone with the disorder has been a learning curve. 'When I met him I was like, why is he so messy and why is he never on time?' she says. 'We had a few clashes, but it was up to me to do my research and understand his brain. Once I did that it was a turning point in our relationship because he felt loved and supported. I follow a lot of TikTok accounts for people with ADHD partners and they really have been helpful because I have a lot more patience and understanding.' Now the trio live together in Thirlwall's six-bedroom house in south-east London. What's a typical evening for the pop star, her boyfriend and her best friend since secondary school? 'Whoever gets in first makes dinner. I'm not a big TV watcher, but them two love Love Island. Me and Holly are like grandmas, so we'll sit and do a jigsaw – anything to stop me going on my phone. At the moment I'm making a Lego castle. Then there's always a point in the evening where Jordan knows to take himself to bed because we're going to watch Lady Gaga music videos.' The Jade Thirlwall of today is galaxies away from the anxious teenager who auditioned for The X Factor – she's firmly in control of her own story, with a record deal stipulating that she has final say on all creative decisions. Still, she's conscious never to lose touch with the inner fangirl who dreamed of emulating her idols. 'A lot of making this record has been about pleasing my younger self and tapping into that love of pop that I've always had,' she says. 'When I'm nervous before going on stage, I picture her in the front row, reminding me not to forget that part of myself.' Young Jade was there at the Brits, on Later … With Jools Holland and at Glastonbury. 'I close my eyes and imagine her telling me, 'You're going to kill it!'' And then? 'And then I do.' JADE's debut solo album, That's Showbiz Baby!, is released on 12 September.
