That’s Showbiz Baby! The Encore

When JADE unleashed That’s Showbiz Baby onto the world back in September, she had already built up her solo credibility to stratospheric proportions thanks to singles like “Angel of My Dreams,” “IT Girl” and “Plastic Box.” In other words, at this point in time, fans are clamoring for new songs from her in that the ones on That’s Showbiz Baby have grown “old” in this constant cycle of “more, more, more” and “new, new, new” (even though much of what goes viral on TikTok, song-wise, hardly falls into the latter category).

This is a larger part of the reason why “deluxe editions” of albums have been such a trend this year, whether it was Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead, MARINA’s Princess of Power, HAIM’s I Quit, Kali Uchis’ Sincerely, or Tate McRae’s So Close to What???. FKA Twigs even went so far as to release an entire “companion” album to Eusexua, called Eusexua Afterglow, to bookend the year with more of her new music as well. The point being, JADE is very much on-trend at this moment for releasing a revitalized edition of That’s Showbiz Baby titled That’s Showbiz Baby! The Encore.

And what an encore it is, featuring eight new tracks that practically make it a “companion” album à la Eusexua Afterglow. To be sure, the frenzy around JADE’s music, particularly in the UK, has warranted this fresh batch of songs, and JADE has more than delivered. Or served, if you prefer.

Kicking it off with “Church,” an empowered, LGBTQIA+ anthem, JADE continues to assert herself as one of the UK’s most important allies to this community. That much also reconfirmed with her recent appearance on the cover of Gay Times, expressing her strong kinship with this part of her fanbase, telling the magazine in her interview, “I wanted ‘Church’ to feel like a love letter to those fans. It’s no secret that I have a predominantly LGBTQIA+ fan base. ‘Church’ is like ‘Angel [Of My Dreams],’ it’s telling a story of my journey within that space.”

A space that the likes of another OG gay icon named Madonna is also well-versed in. Which is perhaps why JADE took some overt cues from the Queen of Pop by making “Church” in the spirit (no pun intended) of “Like A Prayer” (and obviously, JADE is a Madonna fan, if the cover of “Frozen” she also included on The Encore wasn’t enough of an indication). To that end, “Church” takes plenty of advantage of its religious motif right out of the (pearly) gate via the opening 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 [you know, as in werk, a command that’s also made during “Midnight Cowboy” by Ncuti Gatwa]/Down on your knees/Let me be your church.” Yes, it’s very “When you call my name/It’s like a little prayer/I’m down on my knees/I wanna take you there.”

JADE, too, wants to take her gay audience there, offering especial solace to them during the heartening bridge of the track, “All the sinners in the place [since most conservatives/“bible beaters” view gay and trans people as “sinners”]/Show me love, give me faith/Girls, dolls [a nod to the trans community, as popularized by “Protect the 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” (on another Madonna-related note, she also has a song called “Holy Water” from Rebel Heart). JADE even goes the extra “kilometer” in paying homage to the still-too-often-tarred-and-feathered gay community by referencing Oscar Wilde in the lyrics, “From the gutter to the stars/I’m everywhere you are.” Because, not only was Wilde a gay Brit (by way of Ireland), but he was the one who famously said, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

So, sure, in a sense, maybe Wilde should have a co-writing credit on “Church” in addition to Pablo Bowman, Mark Schick and Sarah Hudson. Though it’s the latter’s writing contributions that JADE was sure to underscore to Gay Times, calling Hudson “one of the girlies that gets it,” as well as lauding her for being “really intertwined with the LGBTQIA+ community in LA, so it felt important to write a song like that with her.” As for the producers, which included Schick, JADE again ties “Church” to Madonna (whether consciously or not) by having tapped Jason Evigan (who produced Rebel Heart’s “Ghosttown” and “Inside Out”) to help cultivate the “spiritual” sound as well.

Not that “This Is What We Dance For” (instead produced by Lostboy) doesn’t have that—and plenty more LGBTQIA+-friendliness to go around—working in its favor as well. Because, like any gay icon worth her weight in couture, JADE knows that the dance floor is still the environment that this community feels most carefree in, most able to escape from other more unpleasant realities (which is why Madonna also said, “I know a place where you can get away/It’s called a dance floor”). JADE feels much the same as she sings, “My brain’s been misbehavin’/Anxiety’s fuckin’ crazy/And my heart’s been palpitating/Keepin’ me up every night/I need a distraction/Maybe if I move my body it will start a chain reaction/Hope it helps me feel alri-ight.” The beat then begins to pick up (though it doesn’t entirely “drop” just yet) as JADE delivers a harmonizing “ooh” before further elaborating on why the dance floor is such a magical place of respite for the fraught mind, describing, “I’m about to disappear/Ooh, where it’s dark, but it’s light in here/Oh, I don’t hate what I see outside/Can the rhythm cover my eyes?” With the rhythm in question having picked up even more by now, JADE heightens the occasional lyrical contrast to the upbeat tempo by announcing, “I’m a little depressed [said in a way that sounds like, “I’m a little bit pressed”]/And you’re a little bit torn/I just want to destress here on the dance floor.”

Her fervent appreciation for this uniquely inviting atmosphere grows even more urgent and reverent when she says, “Need the beat just to keep me alive/DJ, please take me out of my mind.” That latter request being a much taller order than, “Hey Mr. DJ, put a record on/I wanna dance with my baby.” And, in treating both DJ and dance floor as her salvation (again with the religious metaphor), JADE also channels the sentiment of Indeep’s “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.” In this way, the DJ is like the priest presiding over the holy communion taking place before him, best encapsulated by JADE when she gushes, “I’m seeing all these faces/That are all from different places/That are looking for safe spaces//That’ll help them feel alright/We all got our reasons, baby/Dancin’ so we don’t go crazy/Tell me, what you escapin’?”

Of course, trying to escape from the intolerance of the “real” world through the theoretical “safe space” of a dance floor doesn’t always secure the desired result—that is, if an atrocity like the Pulse nightclub shooting is anything to go by. And yes, this is precisely why it’s never been more important and vital for the LGBQTIA+ population to find community on the dance floor, to defiantly keep claiming these spaces for themselves, even as certain “sects” (*cough cough* Tories and Republicans) try to deny them their modicum of fun, of release. Which is the reason, as JADE says, that we dance at all. Or, to quote JADE directly, “Baby, this is what we dance for.” To find release, to find community (though usually not a straight one).

As for what we slumber for, well, JADE suggests that she probably isn’t the only one who goes to sleep for the sake of enjoying some “impure” dreams. Impure, of course, in the sense that there are still some people who believe in monogamy (Lily Allen included), ergo not violating a romantic partner’s trust by cheating…in real life. So it is that JADE presents the caveat of at least being “allowed” to have an active fantasy life. Indeed, a fantasy life that’s not even in one’s control when they’re asleep (see also: Charlotte York having a wet dream about the gardener in the “What Goes Around Comes Around” episode of Sex and the City—talk about dreamcheating, dahling!). Which is exactly what JADE explores as she chirps, “I dreamcheated on you last night/It doesn’t really count if they’re not alive/I can’t even look you the eye/But I can’t wait to go back to sleep/Tonight.”

Delivered in an almost “60s girl group” manner (not, mind you, in a “2010s girl group” manner à la Little Mix), one could easily imagine Ronnie Spector singing this type of number “back in the day” had such lyrics then been deemed “acceptable” for public consumption. Granted, JADE assuring her lover that she hasn’t (technically) been untrue is the kind of line that definitely would have been right at home in the music of the early 60s. Though not such other blithe admissions as, “It be so sexual/When I get under the covers, I’m smothered by another lover, ah.”

Elsewhere, she tells her beau, “I bet you do it too.” But if she’s addressing her real-life boyfriend, Jordan Stephens, it would be something of a risk for him to admit to doing so considering that JADE actually wrote “FUFN (Fuck You for Now)” after having a dream that he had cheated on her. Perhaps the flipside result to such a dream is “Dreamcheater,” with JADE relishing the opportunity to “hit the hay again” so she can have another Charlotte York-like reverie. Still, JADE keeps it sweetly faithful when she assures her waking life boo, “In the reality you can have all of me.” Except that she kind of turns that into a “backhanded sweetness” by adding, “Until I fall asleep.” However, on the following track, “Best You Could,” it’s JADE who presents herself as the one done wrong.

As such, it’s only right that “Best You Could” is a midtempo ballad that finds JADE recalling such pain as, “You made me cry so many times, but it’s alright” and “There’s a million ways to be there for somebody/You had a million words, all I needed was sorry.” Despite her longtime agonizing over all the ways in which her now ex could have loved her better, JADE comes to the conclusion, “Went to hell and back, and now we’re good/I know you did the best you could.” Alas, this person’s “best” was apparently the worst for JADE, and yet, after so many years of hurt, she finds it in her heart to declare, “Mm, I forgive, forgive all the ways you let me down/And weren’t around/When I called out/You only loved me in a way that you really knew how.” In this regard, she’s doing what Madonna would try to in her post-Kabbalah era: not only forgive someone that fucked her over, but also wish them well.

Switching gears in tone and tempo, “Use Me” veers back to the overall motif of That’s Showbiz Baby, which is that to be a “star” is, in fact, to tell people (whether the suits or the fans), “I’ll give you anything you want from me/Keep on soaking up my energy/That’s all you use me for/My voice, my lips/That’s all you use me for/My moves, the hits.” Her sardonic sense of humor about what it means to be a pop singer is quintessentially British in its wryness, complete with announcing, “My body’s yours to objectify.” The siren-like tone of her voice for this track is complemented by the TMS-produced backing track, which has an air of early 2000s-ness to it, only intensifying the easy comparisons to Britney Spears on this particular song. Perhaps a subconscious decision in that no one was more used and abused by the pop game than Spears.

Even by Madonna herself, who infamously gave Britney (and Christina) a kiss seen ‘round the world at the 2003 VMAs. But it isn’t 2003 that JADE goes back to for the next song, but rather, 1998, covering Madonna’s lush Ray of Light ballad, “Frozen.” Having released the track in March of ‘25 as an “Apple Music exclusive,” it now finds a home on the deluxe edition of That’s Showbiz Baby for good reason. After all, who knows better about the rigors and resentments that showbiz can bring than Madonna? As for why JADE homed in on this track of M’s, she explained, “I’ve always been a huge fan of Madonna’s, and this is one of my favorites of hers. I love the drama of the song and I’ve always related to the lyrics, learning to open up my heart. I feel like my cover respects the original whilst also bringing it into the JADE world.”

In a way, that’s true. But, for the most part, JADE brings little to the material, keeping it banal for the majority of the song without capturing the same drama as Madonna does in the original. At the two-minute-thirteen-second mark, JADE decides to make the track into a more “dance floor-ready” number, which is less “bringing it into the JADE world” and more a sign of total out-of-left-fieldness that JADE seems to hope will convey her additional take on the original: “It feels like a mix of genres. It isn’t your typical pop song by a pop artist, and one thing that Madonna has always done so well is make each era so unique and boundary-pushing.”

“Frozen” securing a place on That’s Showbiz Baby also fits in with the motif of the record, for JADE recalls the single being seminal to her early belief that she was destined for pop star greatness of her own, stating, “I remember dancing to this as a child in the living room, as if I was already a humongous pop star. I put on my own theater performance in my bedroom.”

As for another artist who’s been keen on showing her love of Madonna through imitation in recent years, it’s Sabrina Carpenter who happens to be all over the next song on the record, “If My Heart Was a House,” a track that has some patent similarities—in terms of wielding a house as a metaphor—to Man’s Best Friend’s “House Tour.” But rather than being sexual with her use of the “my body is the house” suggestion, JADE veers into far more romantic territory, likening her heart alone to a house—not, as Carpenter does, her entire body. For it’s the heart she considers her most precious offering. And, when taking into account what she had said about “Frozen,” that she has “always related to the lyrics, learning to open up my heart,” the placement of “If My Heart Was a House” after it makes plenty of sense. After all, it’s throughout this foreboding-sounding ditty that she warns her latest lover, “Baby, if my heart was a house, was a house/You could take a look around, look around, look around/You could make yourself at home, take a seat on the couch/But whatever you do/Baby, don’t go into that room with the lock and the key.” At the same time, JADE admits, “You’ve been closer than anybody has ever been” and so, accordingly, “Whatever you do/If you keep on pushing me/Then I might give you the key.” Or, as Madonna puts it on “Frozen,” “You hold the key” (itself a throwback to what she said on 1986’s “Open Your Heart”: “I hold the lock and you hold the key”).

For the final song on The Encore, “Tar” (no, it’s not about Lydia Tár), JADE allows her listeners a full minute of “intermission.” For that’s how long the silence at the beginning of the song plays before JADE redirects us back to the main theme again: the push and pull—the pros and cons—of being famous. Of having one’s “dreams come true.” Which is why a vicious cycle of negative self-talk can occur as a result of constantly being in the spotlight. So it is that JADE paints the picture, “Bad thoughts sticking to me like tar/Sometimes I forget that I’m a superstar/Stickin’ pins in my voodoo doll/A teddy bear with the head fallin’ off/And I’m waitin’ for bad shit to happen/My imposter syndrome is laughin’.” In short, JADE might be a huge star after all these years of slogging it out in a reality TV-generated girl group, but it doesn’t mean she feels any less like an imposter.

On the plus side, she still knows how to wryly (again with the British wryness) “boost herself up” by offering, “At least I look good/My lipstick don’t smudge/Even when I hit the turbulence” (a very Ariana Grande mood, namely when she sings, “You got me misunderstood/But at least I look this good”). Her feelings of being an “imposter” are also at play when she says, “Always look my best when I think the worst”—a pronouncement that echoes what fellow British pop star MARINA says on 2010’s “Oh No!”: “‘Cause I feel like I’m the worst/So I always act like I’m the best.”

As the most musically stripped-back offering of The Encore, “Tar” is designed, at its conclusion, to leave listeners hanging. Much the same way as JADE herself is on this edition of the album’s cover, catering to the Sandie Shaw sample she uses at the beginning of “Angel of My Dreams,” “I wonder if one day that, you’ll say that, you care.” This line expressly taken from, what else, “Puppet on a String,” which is exactly how JADE looks on this iteration of the record’s cover art. Driving home the point, for one final encore, that she knows the game is designed to “use her,” but that she still can’t turn away from it no matter how abusive it can feel at times. To the point where, “Sometimes I forget that I’m a—” Although the word “superstar” should complete the last line of “Tar” (repeated from the beginning line), the music then warps and slows before fading out, leaving us wondering if she really does (or even can) see herself as a star. Because, regardless of all that is now known about stardom and its ills, one still can’t help but think that it’s supposed to be synonymous with “the good life.” And since JADE continues to be subjected to such travails, it’s easy for her to keep questioning whether she’s really a star if it’s not constant “sunshine and roses.” However, for her gay and straight fans alike, there’s no question at all about her star power, especially with The Encore to double down on the majesty of That’s Showbiz Baby.