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Jessie J Live Review: "Pop Music As It's Supposed To Be"
She's slowly making her name as the UK Queen of Pop, but would she deliver live on the promise of her early singles?
Coming out of the station on Saturday evening, escaping the carriages packed with swathes of Olympic stragglers and Eastern Electrics refugees, a look down Chalk Farm Road, deep in the heart of Camden, revealed a half-mile long queue jutting out from the historic Roundhouse.
Quite how many acts, with but one album in their discographies, could attract such a feverous (and varied) crowd, is uncertain. How many British acts? Hardly any that you could think of, barring Jessie J.
Jessie J, born Jessica Cornish, had already been a successful songwriter for some time (penning the odious Miley Cyrus behemoth “Party in the USA” perhaps a lucrative misstep) before she struck out on her own with the stunning, sexually-ambiguous “Do It Like A Dude”. Pop-melodrama in the mould of Lady Gaga, it was abrasive, combative and catchy-as-fuck. Legend has it that the song was originally intended for a certain songstress whose remit often lies slap bang within the abrasive-pop, Rihanna; but the label thought the song so brilliant that they insisted J release it herself (the legitimacy of such a rumour – that a major record label would hand over what they determined to be a stone-cold hit to the writer instead of one of the biggest selling artists in the world – is one that I am hesitant to accept).
Is this what pop music is? Homogeneity dressed up in fashion and shoved into your face until you’re bludgeoned into accepting it?
Something happened, however, in the proceeding months. Gone was the jagged juxtaposition of a cute Essex girl with a punky haircut smacking you in the face with football-pitch-sized lungs and a “Fuck you” ‘tude. Inevitably, in came the cookie-cutter pop of proceeding singles, such as “Laserlight” (“featuring” the ever lamentable presence of wanky super-producer David Guetta) and the saccharine Katy Perry-dom of “Price Tag”. Include “Domino” in this list and they’re all mega-singles, shifting shedloads of copies of singles in a time where singles don’t generally shift shedloads of copies, but without what made J special in the first place. The pipes remained, but the edges had been sanded off (the fact that the best song I’ve heard from her, “Mamma Knows Best” - three minutes of Ronson-tinged bombast; a soul-pop record she’ll be hard pushed to top – was not released as a single is a fucking travesty).
Is this what pop music is? Homogeneity dressed up in fashion and shoved into your face until you’re bludgeoned into accepting it? Sure, it’d always been this way, but why should it? I wondered as I drained my pint.
Strolling into the beautifully revamped venue, the Roundhouse was buzzing. Twitter had been ablaze with tweens tweeting just how pant-wettingly excited they were to get into the place, not many minding the two hour wait.
The Special Ks, the opening act of the night, breezed onto the stage with their thoughtfully-composed “Oh I just threw this on” outfits and terrible haircuts, full of the kind of confidence usually reserved for young-upstarts and megastars. Their Friendly Fires-style electro-indie was fun if fleeting, but the crowd were into it, dancing like crazy as if it was THEY who they came to see (maybe that’s true for some of them). Quite the opposite could be said for the proceeding Mr Hudson’s horrific DJ set, a cringe-worthy blur of tech problems, a crowd not dancing to the obvious “club banger” set he had composed amidst a cacophony of bad beat-matching.
When Jessie burst onstage with the knock out one-two of “Do It Like A Dude” and “Who’s Laughing Now?”, I was excited (even half-ignoring the horrific verses of the latter, pseudo-Nikki Minaj back-in-the-day tripe deemed acceptable after Cher Lloyd lowered the bar so low with her dribbly, white-girl rapping on the X Factor). Opening with your best song after only one album’s worth of material was a risk, but one that paid off. The rest of the night rode through on it’s bluster, even during the mid-set lull, featuring a down-tempo cover of Usher’s “Climax” exhibited J’s lung-capacity, as it reached deep-sea-diver heights (or lows, I’m unsure of which in this analogy).
Opening with your best song after only one album’s worth of material was a risk, but one that paid off
The crowd were into it as J forwent the Vitamin Water kick-arseing (they sponsored the night – their cherry water with Southern Comfort cocktails were pretty cool) and Olympic-saluting sappiness, leaving only a brief, cursory word for each, focusing on her tight set. Clocking in at a swift fifty minutes (give or take), J bounced around with energy, looking stunning in a shimmering gold, bum-length dress. She’s pretty into pleasing her fans too, giving one lucky Alex a signed jacket deemed surplus to her requirements and randomly dedicating the gig to another.
Originally, I was reticent as to whether I’d enjoy the gig, but despite myself, I did. She is charming and likably brash with talent to spare, but I knew that already. My umbrage was with the mulch she’s been slinging since her debut single, but even those I aforementioned I lapped up like crazy. Perhaps it was the beautiful girl in-front of me, intoxicating with her incongruous skanking and gun-fingering to a Jessie cover of “Never Too Much”, but I enjoyed it. This was pop music as it’s supposed to be.
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COMMENTS
Glad to read this. I'm taking my 6 yr old daughter to see Jessie J at Sandown tonight (not that she'll be able to see anything mind!) And it seems I might enjoy it too....
A vacuous Essex person. She 'thinks' like an issue of The Sun. If any 'artist' wants respect, the they do something different. Not a watered-down version of what is regarded as 'cool' by US media. Next!
Bill Hicks is eating his revolver in his smoke-filled grave. More corporate suckers of Satan's cock. Total and utter waste of time. And you, pollmeister, i'm ringing social services on you. Why are you subjecting your porr defenceless daughter to this vacuous pointless twaddle?
Didn't think Sabotage Times reviewed gigs by artists primarily marketed at school age girls, surely not the readership's regular demographic ?
Frankly, if you think pop music is less worthy of review than the latest Yo La Tengo then you need to pull your head from out of your anus.
Not what I was getting at at all, Sam, being a true child of the 80s I'm a great lover of pure pop music, I even think some of Jessie's music is ok and am appreciative of her talent as a writer and performer (even dare I say it quite fanciable), am just questioning why the main demographic of Sabotage Times readers would be interested in Jessie J when she is well publicised elsewhere ? p.s. I'd much rather go to an 80's pop night at a club than listen to Yo La Tengo anyway - making such a bizarre assumption and an arbitrary choice of indie artist shows all signs of head-up-your-own-anus syndrome !
I was being deliberately arbitrary (though your indifference to Yo La Tengo makes me feel sad) because flippancy is fun. It was just a high-profile gig that people will be interested in; I tried not to write it like a Smash Hits article, tried to write it in a way that would say "Oh okay, I don't generally like her music or the music delivered by her ilk, but this show was fucking great".
Get a room
Daznez and Big Al - have you ever actually seen Jessie live or know anything about her, or are you just jumping on the bandwagon where it's fashionable to disrespect new artists? The implication Daznez made about her being involved in the Illuminati is laughable, there's a lot of hearsay about artists today being involved in same, and it sounds a lot like you're tarring Jessie with the same brush, going by what you've read in the media and then jumping to your own conclusions. I was there at Sandown Park last night and it was a night to be remembered. Aside from her outstanding vocal ability, she cares deeply about her fans, she doesn't drink, smoke or take drugs and is an incredible role model. Why wouldn't Pollmeister want to take his impressionable 6 year old to a show put on by somebody like Jessie?? Did you know Jessie gave her own bottle of water to a fan who was on the verge of fainting last night? Did you know she recently invited two terminally ill children onto the stage with her at one of her gigs? Did you know there were 10 young fans waiting overnight to get to the front of another sold-out gig recently, Jessie heard about them and bought them all a hotel room for the night (with her own credit card) AND made sure they still got to the front the next day?? I'm guessing you probably didn't know any of this and you really need to do your research before spouting your offhand unsupported comments. People who diss artists based on what they read from journalists... NEXT!!
@Selz. Go listen to Johnny Cash singing 'Hurt' and tell me you can't tell the difference. That was just off the top of my head. No idea about the illuminati or whateevr, don't pay attention to mainstream media, as i'm not a child and have more than half a brain. Nice that JJ takes care of her fans.
Oh, so your implication now is that if you're not singing depressing songs, you're a 'corporate sucker of Satan's cock'? I have no issue with artists like Cash, great respect for them in fact, but since this review was of a Jessie J gig you're making sound like you think she doesn't know pain. Which clearly shows that you don't know a thing about her.
No, I don't. And I don't want to. It's not about depressing, it's about passion. Heart and soul. Music not created with the sole purpose of making money, which is what this, and most of its ilk is.
[makes big long slurping sounds]
Thanks, you just completely proved my point. Jessie doesn't create songs with the purpose of making money, she writes music to heal people. She has said this many times. Which it has been doing. You only need to look at her fanbase to see that. But I'll let you get back to your immature dick sucking impressions since you seem incapable of having a sensible debate.
I was gonna leave it. B~ut all music is about emotion. Is it possible they can make you feel some emotion without ever having experienced it themselves? Is it possible to manipulate your mind to accept what ever they want you to believe? No? What are you, a fucking droid? Sorry, even C3p0 was aware he was a dork : "she writes music to heal people," sorry, couldn't resist - why not be a fucking doctor then? seriously, i'm a musician, and yes, it'd be nice to heal, or even bonjela someone with a tune of mine, but failing that, we're here, it's right now, and i'm going to sing and play my fucking balls off for you. You know why? Cos nothing else matters - for me anyway. If you don't want to join in, don't, you have a right to do that, I totally respect your rights, but if not, and i'm rocking, wtf not?? Postscript: she hedged her bets - she played her biggest two songs first - "after that, she could have done anything" (don't think that's a quote - i'm parapnhrasing my own mind, on superbubble, but still..) Listen sonny, there's real quality, and then there's the stuff they want to sell you cos it might feel like it's real to you. Know the difference, or don't play with music again. Hopefully you'll get burned (and then the spirit gets you, then you know..)
Well that made about 3 ounces of sense. Come back when you can form a coherent paragraph. Ok, bye. :) PS. Sonny would be a great nickname except I'm a girl.
I'd still call you Sonny. You probably have a boy's hair cut. or James Caan's from the Godfather.
Bill Hicks was a dickhead anyway.
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