As grimacing pop vixen Jessie J launches into blazing torch song ‘Mamma Knows Best’ from behind a thick black curtain, I’m relieved to hear that the London diva’s vocals are right on the ch-chang, ch-chang. When that curtain drops, I’m faced with what I can only describe as a very beautiful ghetto Cleopatra. Cheeky, brazen and vehemently shaking her assorted groove things, Jessie J is the ultimate flirt.
There’s just one problem: I don’t think this woman has been to a gig before.
23-year-old Jessica Cornish seems instantly uncomfortable with the rowdy atmosphere in the Academy tonight, warning the revellers that if they must sing along with her hits, they should do it quietly.
“You lot are so loud, you’re bleeding down my mike!” she wails, eyeballing some giddy teens in the pit.
Miss J made headlines shortly after this show for tweeting disgust at her Trinity Ball audience the following night. It’s not unreasonable for the young teetotaller to be put off by drunken student roughhousing, but why she can’t leave crowd controlling duties to the security team is beyond me. She’s due back on Irish shores for Oxegen in July, so here’s hoping she’ll be better versed in the ways of the mad-for-it festival generation by then.
Back in The Academy, I’m (quietly) hoping for at least one really sensational number tonight, having seen proof of Jessie J’s astounding pipes and rather impressive freestyling credentials on YouTube. Instead, I just get an earful.
“Why are you still pushing?!” she booms, sounding every bit the cranky schoolteacher, “it ain’t your name in lights!”
I can forgive the Kitty Farmer routine if the tunes are in the right place, but sadly, Jessie J is serving up more sassback than sass. For a decent portion of the show, our catsuit-ed MC is simply spoonfeeding the crowd a lot of hooey about reaching for the moon, shooting for the stars and, by the looks of her pelvic gyrations, ejaculating all over the milky way. Worse still, our raunchy Mystic Meg can’t let an hour go by without having a pop at the press, or griping about unsavoury comments she’s been getting on Twitter.
Skyscraping money notes are delivered with unshakable aplomb, but a truly astonishing voice is all but lost on the album title-track ‘Who You Are’ and the painfully sappy ‘L.O.V.E’. ‘Who’s Laughing Now?’ is fiercer and miles more enjoyable, but the most arresting moment of the night comes totally by accident, when a crew member stops the show to tend to a problem with her mike. With nothing else to do, Jessie belts out a few lines of ‘Rainbow’ a cappella, and it’s damn-near wonderful.
All right, so she’s been getting guff from the paps. Haters be hatin’. We get it. Pretty much every other pop star is capable of leaving their personal grumbles in the dressing-room – why must Jessie J play by her own rules? Even as I type this, I can hear her honking at me, “This is just who I am! I’m outspoken, y’knaaw?” The woman is absolutely exhausting.
She finally strums up some kind of carefree vibe for chart-topper ‘Price Tag’, which thankfully is less scold, more spunk. At one point one of her shoes flies off and, to her credit, she doesn’t whine, she just keeps on skanking. If only she’d kicked them off a bit sooner.