When she first emerged, Jessie J was tattooed, spoke candidly about her bisexuality and favoured sexually frank lyrics. She seemed unique: an X Factor-era pop star with a whiff of danger.
Her image has subsequently undergone a stark refinement. Far from an r-rated mash-up of Rihanna and Azealia Banks, Jessie J really wanted to be an arena starlet, a contemporary of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga et al. Her second album certainly cleaves to all the tics and tropes demanded of a mass-market entertainer. Working with songwriters such as Max Martin (Britney, Pink), Steve Mac (JLS, Shakira) and Wayne Hector (One Direction), she has authored a work of terrifying glossiness. In interviews, Jessie J has said the record is a rumination on what it is to be famous and a woman in a world of Twitter hate, Facebook smack-downs and ubiquitous smart-phone gotcha opportunities. Well, it doesn’t make for a great album. Instead, with her harsh voice and robotic rhyming – she raps the way Arnold Schwarzenegger acts – Jessie J seems intent on pummeling the listener into submission.
Opener ‘Ain’t Been Done’ is strangely angry – has Jessie J really been that hard done by? – while, hooking up with rhymer 2 Chainz, on ‘Burnin’ Up’ she delivers – with a straight face – lines such as “I’ve got the matches you’ve got the gasoline/ Light up the floor like it’s Billie Jean.” As with everything else here, she sounds mad as heck – but I for one am not convinced.
OUT NOW.