JADE Church

As the Year of JADE continues, it’s plain to see that things are hardly winding down just because the year is coming to a close. In fact, JADE has seen Christmastime as the perfect opportunity to show love for her fans. More specifically, for her LGBTQIA+ fans, who, now more than ever, need as much love as they can get. After all, it’s not exactly a “kind” time, politically, for those who are branded as “different” or “wrong” or “sinful.” And with most of the world leaning toward the far right at this juncture, a song like “Church” is extremely meaningful, for it is JADE’s rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt othered in “Establishment”-type spaces.

Accordingly, “Church” is not only the first track on That’s Showbiz Baby! The Encore, but the first single from it as well. Which is why it was given its music video due with direction from Billy King and creative direction from Maximilian Raynor, described by Bricks magazine as “design[ing] every look and co-shap[ing] the film’s creative vision.” A vision that looks not unlike the “witchy, Florence + the Machine sort of energy from the Everybody Scream album and visuals (think: “Everybody Scream” or “Sympathy Magic”). But, more than that, it’s films like The Blair Witch Project and Midsommar that show their noticeable signs of influence on the video’s aesthetics and motifs. A key one, in terms of the latter, being to convey Raynor’s main idea behind the project: “It’s a spoof on the anger I feel towards religious conversion camps, so it’s our playful take on that. In our world, we convert to the Church of Pop, and we don’t tell anyone what to do with their lives. We welcome everyone in, who they are, and who they want to be.”

So it is that the video begins with its The Blair Witch Project-esque filming style—complete with showing the viewer “edgy,” disjointed scenes in the woods—as a group of women dressed in matching conservative attire (including what can be described as The Handmaid’s Tale-style bonnets) scurry about toward some as-of-yet-unknown destination. King then cuts to JADE standing against a black backdrop as she delivers the divine intro verse, “Oh baby, pray for me/Like I would pray for you/Whatever gets you off/Until your knees are bruised/While the world burns/Let me see you work/Down on your knees/Let me be your church.”

Another cut finds JADE dressed in a more vibrant ensemble, a polka dotted number (and yes, the polka dots do kind of look like a shade of “Brat green”), as she proceeds to strut through a surrounding crowd as they listen, rapt, to her tale, “When I was a baby girl, that’s when I saw the queen/Nothing like Elizabeth, more like Destiny [which also easily works as a reference to having seen a drag queen’s performance]/Oh, she looked divine, elegant and free/She bowed to my level/Blew a kiss and said to me,/‘It’s hard enough to be alive/Might as well dance or die.’” This notion of retreating into/onto the dance floor being a common one among the queer community, and the songs addressed to them. With “Church” being no exception to the rule.

In another moment, JADE treats the word “heaven” like it could be the name of a club as she shrugs, “Heaven’s closed/But we could try/‘Cause we’re one hell of a good time.” And that’s certainly far more important than being deemed “correct” by the moral majority. Which is why JADE has found herself in the midst of the kinds of acolytes and worshippers who appreciate her views—open and nonjudgmental—on life, with everyone smiling fondly and understandingly at one another in the “Church of Pop.”

The following scene then takes JADE and co. outside, with the former dressed in a flowing white gown that has “futuristic Jesus” vibes as she stands perched atop a ladder next to “living sculpture” Daniel Lismore, the pair making up the center of the circle surrounding them, with other worshippers sitting on hay bales as they observe JADE giving some more of her “sermon.” A sermon that, in essence, calls for being unapologetically oneself—prompting an observer to experience something like religious ecstasy as they break out into the kind of epileptic dance moves that Ian Curtis was known for.

JADE goes from neo-Jesus figure to fashionable wood nymph in the next instant, roving through the woods as the acolytes behind her engage in such activities as primping in a vanity mirror (an incongruous sight in the woods, of course), signing sleeves from The Encore edition of the album and making strange movements behind a detached, free-standing car door as JADE continues, “Now I’m fully blossomed/Got my flowers, live the dream/Carrying the wisdom that was passed down onto me/If you need advice or you don’t believe/Get onto my level/Listen up, I’ll set you free.” And it appears as though she does just that for everyone, especially a woman (who looks just like her) whose eyes she stares directly into. To the point where King sees fit to flash back and forth between the two so rapidly that they practically become one. For that’s how JADE views her intense communion with her LGBTQIA+ fanbase, telling Gay Times, “It’s no secret that I have a predominantly LGBTQIA+ fanbase” and “I think now more than ever, I need to be stepping my ally pussy up and showing up in ways even I haven’t done before. I’m always looking online and seeing what my fans suggest about how to do that. So it’s definitely a mutual love, and it has grown stronger as a solo artist. I just hope that comes across as authentic.”

It definitely does throughout the “Church” video, with that authentic connection she has with this particular part of her fanbase shining through all the more as the narrative takes a turn for the Christmas-oriented, including pops of red clothing, tinsel and being in a barn-like setting with hay. Hay that is, in fact, peppered with the tinsel that’s falling in reverse, as it were, lending an even more surreal, ethereal aura to these final moments of the video, when JADE further suffuses the lyrics with her brand of religiosity, urging, “Baby, stay a while/Until we see the light.” King then offers another instance of fast cross-cutting between JADE and all the “key players” of her video, including Sekou, Bel Priestly, Harriet Rose and Bolly Illusion, being featured in the panoply of the LGBTQIA+ rainbow.

As for the bridge, said in that Lady Gaga during “Born This Way” fashion (specifically, “Don’t be a drag/Just be a queen/Whether you’re broke or evergreen”), JADE provides the finally rallying cry, “All the sinners in the place/Show me love, give me faith/Girls, dolls, party boys/Rise above the dirty noise/If you’re all out of sugar/Then I’m the sweetest taste/Take this holy water/And wash that pretty face.” While saying this, JADE stands in the woods in her white frock, looking positively bridal (though not as bridal as she did during the opening to her BRIT Awards performance of “Angel of My Dreams”), even holding a bouquet as two disciples dance before her with abandon.

The denouement of the video finds JADE in the “barn” again and offering up another final “costume change” (a paper “dress,” of sorts, with a matching “three-horned” “crown,” creating her own Dani in Midsommar effect). One that very much channels some Joan of Arc vibes as those prancing around her relish her Christlike image a bit more before she starts to burn. The suggestion of such burning in the final moments indicated by a flickering against her face and the crackling sound that only flames can make (a very “Dark Ballet” maneuver, to be sure).

So yes, it would seem JADE is willing to burn at the stake in the name of her allyship for the LGBTQIA+ community. And because of that alone (in addition to some very saintly lyrics and festive visuals), there’s no doubt that JADE’s “Church” deserves to be the Christmas number one in the UK when the time comes. Besides, what’s more Christmas-y than parading tolerance? (That is, apart from parading capitalism.)