It’s Halloween weekend in Cardiff city centre, and Jessie J is fitting right in. Swathed in dazzling white bandages with her trademark black bob, Jessie is channelling Cleopatra, post mummification. She stands with her feet too far apart and tells us in her gobby Essex accent about a recent trip to Poundland where she blew thirty-eight quid on mint Viscount biscuits, which she charmingly mispronounces as ‘Viss – counts’. She then tells us an anecdote about a pair of leggings and a bitchy shop assistant.
Jessie J does a lot of talking onstage, but luckily she also does a hell of a lot of singing - and when I say ‘singing’, I really do mean singing. She opens with 'Big White Room' like a one-woman gospel choir and then launches into 'Who’s Laughing Now', with it’s crazy-frog intro and schoolyard-chant chorus.
“My parents listened to a lot of great music when I was growing up…” she explains, before tackling a cover of 'Never Too Much', the Luther Vandross wedding disco classic. Personally this was the highlight of the evening, the 80's porno bass line sounded cool, fresh and invigorated when bolstered by Jessie’s vocals.
'Technology', a song about ‘falling in love with a computer instead of a person’ is followed by a costume change, and Jessie emerges in a baseball cap and puffa jacket, looking like the world’s glitteriest trucker, to sing the lairy and ludicrous 'Do It Like A Dude'. Talk about a crowd pleaser. It was slightly bewildering to watch hundreds of pre-teens grabbing their crotches and singing about bitches and dicks, but welcome to the 21st century, feminism.
Jessie does audience participation particularly well, and she knows how to excite her fans. She grabs handfuls of red helium balloons and hands them out to members of a screaming crowd before inviting two disorientated children onto the stage to sing 'Price Tag'. Once the kids get accustomed to the lights and the heat and the fact that they’re singing with OMG JESSIE J!!! it actually becomes quite a memorable moment; the two girls perch on an amp and competently chime in with the chorus before getting a big hug from Jessie at the end.
Jessie J is currently working hard to familiarise herself with her fans and find an identity in the pop world, and her live performances are only going to cement her position as a force to be reckoned with. Her vocal ability is absolutely staggering, and her persona onstage is likable, chatty, sexy and fun. She gets a lot of unfair comparison to megastar warbler Adele, but as Jessie J exits the stage in a haze of glitter whilst rubbing her crotch against a giant pumpkin, it strikes me that Jessie J might be our version of Gaga, but with better pipes. And a lot more Viscounts.
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'Technology', a song about ‘falling in love with a computer instead of a person’ is followed by a costume change, and Jessie emerges in a baseball cap and puffa jacket, looking like the world’s glitteriest trucker, to sing the lairy and ludicrous 'Do It Like A Dude'. Talk about a crowd pleaser. It was slightly bewildering to watch hundreds of pre-teens grabbing their crotches and singing about bitches and dicks, but welcome to the 21st century, feminism.
