Jade Thirlwall has confirmed that she took a dig at her former music manager Simon Cowell with thinly-veiled lyrics in her music.
The former Little Mix star, 32, started up her solo career in 2024 with the track Angel of My Dreams and followed that up with Fantasy.
With her debut single, she sang of ‘selling her soul to a psycho’ and was pressed on whether that was a reference to the former Syco record label manager.
During an appearance on The Louis Theroux Podcast, the host said: ‘Selling my soul to a psycho, they say I’m so lucky.
‘Syco happens to be the name of Simon Cowell’s company. ‘
Jade replied: ‘Coincidentally, yes. I mean, it’s written on the tin, isn’t it?’
Jade Thirlwall has confirmed that she took a dig at her former music manager Simon Cowell with thinly-veiled lyrics in her music (pictured with Louis Theroux on his podcast)
With her debut single, she sang of ‘selling her soul to a psycho’ and was pressed on whether that was a reference to the former Syco record label manager (pictured)
The singer found global fame in 2011, when she won The X Factor alongside Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jesy Nelson and Perrie Edwards.
But she also explained to the documentary maker that she ended up ‘lonely’ despite her success.
She said: ‘I was really in quite a dark place, and my mum had to come on the road with me on tour because I think she was really concerned of what would happen if she wasn’t there.’
Asked if it was lonely for her, she said: ‘Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah, and always when we were probably at our biggest as well, like when we’d have our biggest career moments is probably when I would feel like the worst.
‘So I do understand in that respect. ‘
Jade explained that there was a certain ‘pressure’ put on herself and her bandmates as they racked up hit singles like Love Me Like You, Black Magic and Confetti.
She said: ‘So I think when you’ve got that pressure on you, you know for us as women you’re like becoming a woman in the public eye and you’re trying to maintain relationships outside of that, your work to the bone.
Jade Thirlwall has seemingly taken a dig at Simon Cowell in her new single and fans have noticed
In 2011, she returned to the series – by which time the auditions were held in front of a live audience – and she eventually became part of the winning girl group
Jade (pictured with L-R Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Perrie Edwards and Jesy Nelson) went on to achieve huge success with Little Mix after becoming the first-ever group to win The X Factor
She added: ‘I definitely had moments where I did have very severe like depression or anxiety.
‘There was one era where I was really in quite a dark place, and my mum had to come on the road with me on tour because I think she was really concerned of what would happen if she wasn’t there.
I think like the bigger you get, the more your sort of condition that you have to latch on to that or you have to keep that up because if you come anywhere below that, you’re then flopping, which is so stupid to think of because it’s like, okay, if the next song’s not a number one hit, you flopped.
‘And I think that was not so much now, but especially like 10 years ago that was the mentality of like the industry or like public perception. ‘
The Louis Theroux Podcast is available on Spotify now.