As she releases her first album in eight years, we look back at the British star’s unusual career and why the industry left her behind
If you’re under 25, I imagine you might only know of Jessie J from social media. Maybe you’ve seen the “nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-no” clip, or the live footage of her singing an outlandish acoustic version of “Price Tag” on the BBC. The impression you might glean from her status as a meme is a brightly coloured, chaotic, high-camp queen.
But if you’re older than that, you will remember a time when Jessie J and her brash mid-tempo pop songs were utterly ubiquitous. The dulcet tones of “Do It Like a Dude” ringing out in student union bars, the materialist melancholy of “Price Tag” blasting in the gym. A year after those songs made her – with her striking black bob and thick eyeliner – a star in 2011, she joined the BBC’s new prime time talent show The Voice as a judge, and became a mainstay of British showbiz.
In recent years, those ironic memes have picked up on Instagram and TikTok – and there is also a whole slew of online fans advocating that she never got her dues. Unlike her Brit School contemporary Adele or her US counterparts – her second biggest hit, 2014’s “Bang Bang”, was a collaboration with Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj (see viral video of their live performance at that year’s AMAs) – Jessie J, whose real name is Jessica Cornish, never quite ascended to that untouchable level of pop stardom, never quite built the devoted fanbase that guarantees longevity. Instead, her in-your-face extroversion, her exaggerated look, and her British eccentricity made her an aberration in the pop world, and eventually, a few years later, the perfect caricature for a viral video clip.
Now, things feel more serious for Cornish. She revealed this year that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and cancelled tour dates to have a mastectomy. Her illness delayed the release of her sixth album, Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time, her first in eight years, which came out on Friday – it’s an emotional record of smooth neo-R&B that seems determined to show she’s entering a more mature, refined era.
In many ways it’s easy to see how she became known as something of an oddity. She has worked through creative issues with her fourth album, R.O.S.E., in 2017; rattled through managers (she is now on her eighth); and pivoted to being a contestant on – and ultimately winning – a Chinese talent show in 2018, which she says she didn’t know she was entering until she got there, assuming she’d been invited to appear as a guest. Going from judge to competitor was as strange an about-turn as one she might have made in The Voice’s enormous swivel chairs – and despite the oft-cited fact that more than a billion people tuned in to watch the Singer final on Chinese state television, her participation in the show was, back home, widely mocked.
Pop fans and critics spend a lot of time analysing why monumental figures like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé have reached such stratospheric heights. But perhaps the trajectory of a star like Cornish is more enlightening on how the music industry has changed over the past two decades. Why did the most gifted vocalist of her generation not have a career that matched her ability?
In the late 2000s, as Cornish was coming up, the pop scene was still riding high on its put-together bands and ultra-managed stars, searching for the next malleable young person on the myriad talent shows both here and in the US. Simon Cowell et al capitalised on the neoliberalism that made us all feel as though anyone with the right ingredients –the voice, the looks and the charisma – could make it.
Jessie J, breaking through in 2011, seemed to prove the point. There was always something slightly paint-by-numbers about her presence and her music, but there was no doubt she had all the qualities of a star – the pipes, for sure, but the magnetism and confidence too. For a while, it paid off. But by the time her career was developing in the mid-2010s, it was clear the culture was pushing for more. Pop stars, previously maligned by the rest of the music industry as purely money-making projects, were now expected to be artists, too, with personal brands and concept albums and creative liberty. A quick hit and an impressive vocal run wasn’t enough. In fact, sometimes the runs were the problem – there has long been a sense that Cornish’s impressive singing abilities have occasionally been deployed to the detriment, rather than the enhancement, of the song she is singing.
There are many other artists who suffer from the same affliction – who have seemed to stay stuck in that slightly staid, close-but-no-cigar category. Miley Cyrus, Leona Lewis (also, of course, a talent show prodigy), Tori Kelly – all brilliant voices, some hits, but so different from the likes of Addison Rae, for example, a Gen Z star whose voice barely enters into her success. Sometimes, the two come together – look at Ariana Grande and Chappell Roan – but so often the voice can be sacrificed for a story, a person, a vibe. Swift, the biggest star in the world, is undeniable proof of this. Even Dua Lipa, also a Brit, shows that a lot can be done with a collection of bulletproof songs, even if your performances can be lacklustre.
Jessie J is far from lacklustre. Just watch that “Bang Bang” performance back and her magnetism and vocal ability can make a shiver run down your spine; Don’t Tease Me With a Good Time is her showing off her remarkable instrument in a relaxed, authentic way. But there is still a sense in which pop has left her behind. “Other people sometimes project on to you what they think your success should look like,” she told The Times in August. “But actually I can pay my bills, I’m happy, I have a good balance. I love what I do. I don’t need to be a huge, monstrous pop star.” Fair enough, Jessie – let’s see if the world agrees the second time around.
