Jade Thirlwall said this week that she ‘sold her soul’ for fame by competing on The X-Factor, but there’s no doubt her career with Little Mix has been highly lucrative.
So much so, the singer, 32, who made a splash with her solo performance at the Brit Awards, has bought a house in Blackheath, South London, for nearly £3million.
Jade paid £2.85million for the six-bedroom property, where she lives with her boyfriend Jordan Stephens, 33, frontman of hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks.
He said this week that he was content for her to be richer than him. Jordan admitted: ‘My girlfriend earns more money than me.
‘She’s super-successful and I f****g love it. To some people, it’s emasculating, but I don’t know what their ideas are which I find hilarious.’
Jade, sH๏τ to fame in 2011 when she appeared on The X-Factor and was placed into girl group Little Mix alongside Jesy Nelson, Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock.
Jade Thirlwall (pictured) said this week that she ‘sold her soul’ for fame by competing on The X-Factor, but there’s no doubt her career with Little Mix has been highly lucrative
Jade paid £2.85million for the six-bedroom property, where she lives with her boyfriend Jordan Stephens (pictured), 33, frontman of hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks
Under Simon’s guise, the group won the coveted singing compeтιтion and went on to release huge hits, such as Wings, Black Magic and Shout Out To My Ex, across a decade span.
And she said that she felt she ‘sold her soul’ as she felt she signed up to join industry at a young age.
Speaking on an upcoming episode of BBC’s The ᴀssembly – in which all questions are asked by neurodivergent individuals – she was asked whether she felt as if she had ‘sold her soul’.
She replied: ‘You’ve trumped me. Maybe a little bit in the beginning. I was so young and I just signed on the dotted line.
‘But as the years have gone by I’ve learned more and more about the industry.
‘I’ve been collecting — a bit like [Marvel superhero] Thanos with the stones — I’ve been collecting parts of my soul back as I’ve gained more creative freedom.’
The ‘IT Girl’ hitmaker also admitted she is not entirely sure that music mogul Simon Cowell – who created The X Factor and the Got Talent franchises – is going anywhere.
She said: ‘I think it’s the end of that kind of TV show or music label. I think it’s the end of that era. But I don’t know if Simon Cowell specifically has ended.’
Jade, sH๏τ to fame in 2011 when she appeared on The X-Factor and was placed into girl group Little Mix alongside Jesy Nelson, Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock (picture L to R with Simon in 2018)
Under Simon’s guise, the group won the coveted singing compeтιтion and went on to release huge hits, such as Wings, Black Magic and Shout Out To My Ex, across a decade span
It was suggested previously that the lyric ‘sold my soul to a psycho’ from her ‘Angel of my Dreams’ track was a dig at Simon but Jade later clarified in an interview that that was not necessarily the case.
She told Beat magazine: ‘It’s not specifically about that. But I wanted the song to be my journey, from entering the music business to now, and what that’s felt like. That’s why the song feels so chaotic.
‘The opening is like the music to that montage bit on ‘The X Factor’ after you’ve won, and you’re just catapulted into the industry.’
She added: ‘I don’t want to sit here and bash the last 13 years of my life. I’m very happy and content. But like with any job, there are highs and lows.
‘That’s just life, and it’s my reality, but it’s about writing it in a way that’s not woe is me.’
She also recently opened up on her feelings surrounding Little Mix’s hiatus and embarking on her solo career, as she admitted it took her a moment to get used to going it alone.
She launched her solo career last summer with her debut single, Angel of My Dreams, reaching the top 10 in the UK and recently won Best Pop Act at this year’s BRIT Awards.
Jade is now currently working on her first solo album since she and her Little Mix announced a hiatus in 2022.
And how she has said that she felt she ‘sold her soul’ as she felt she signed up to join industry at a young age
Read More Jade Thirlwall details ‘spiral’ after Little Mix hiatus and had to ‘get used to existing on her own’ 
But despite her success, Jade admitted the foodie podcast, Dish from Waitrose, that she’d had to work hard to learn to stand on her own and start appreciating being able to make her own decisions for the first time.
Speaking to hosts Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett, she admitted that she didn’t feel a sense of freedom after the group’s split ‘at first’, because she’d loved being in the band and it felt like being in a relationship that suddenly ended.
Jade candidly confessed she’d been ‘so conditioned’ to having decisions made for her that she had to ‘get used to existing on my own’.
She explained: ‘Well, we did our last show in 2022? I remember the night after the show 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 eleven 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 years in advance sometimes.’
She continued: ‘I think because I was so used to that being my life, and I was so conditioned to being told where I’m going when and all that stuff.
‘And it’s hard, isn’t it, because when you love it as well, like 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. We just weren’t together anymore.
‘So I really had to get used to existing on my own, and then be like, “okay well what do I want to do? What music choices do I wanna make? Who am I on my own?”‘
Jade explained that as she began handpicking her team and writing music about her own personal experiences, she began to feel that sense of freedom at last.
