Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 34,855
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Originally posted by Phoenixstar
I love the song Who You Are, but that's it
Post it, i wanna see it
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http://m.pitchfork.com/reviews/album...6-who-you-are/
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Mainly, Jessie J seems to be surplus to demand. The contemporary pop landscape is already crowded with well-defined female pop stars-- postmodern disco artiste Lady Gaga, fierce soul goddess Beyoncé, slovenly party girl Ke$ha, cheesecake goofball Katy Perry, cyborg sexpot Britney Spears, troubled ice queen Rihanna, and perennial underdog Robyn. Jessie J is much more of a cipher; she is set apart mainly by the fact that she is British, though her accent only occasionally comes through in her performances. She comes across like a severely dumbed-down Lily Allen at best, and at worst she seems like someone you would want to root against in a televised singing competition. Her approach to song selection on her debut album reinforces the singing-competition vibe-- the music is scattered, covering all the bases in an over-eager attempt to prove vocal chops. It's very ironic, then, that she titled the record Who You Are, because she does pretty much everything but assert a coherent identity over the course of 13 tracks.
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Jessie J's persona seems most defined when she is being totally obnoxious.
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On the same weekend Jessie J was getting her first big push in America as the musical guest on "Saturday Night Live", the music video for Rebecca Black's "Friday" was just beginning to spread around the Internet as a viral sensation. "Friday" took off because people were calling it the worst song ever and mocking its dopey lyrics and awkward approximation of standard modern pop tropes. The biggest difference between Black's song and the contents of Who You Are is that while Jessie J gets the expected formula of pop "right," the hapless Black gets it "wrong." But in that "wrongness" lies a humanity that J cannot approach. Even through bad vocal processing, Black sounds like a specific person. Also, the lyrics of "Friday" may be undeniably clunky, but there is a magic to them that makes the song funny and immensely quotable, like a lot of great pop songs throughout history. Jessie J's lyrics are no less banal and artless, but they lack charm entirely. When she's not going off on bitter rants against those who doubt her, she mainly sings forgettable boilerplate or spouts vapid utopian nonsense, as on the utterly nauseating "Rainbow". Black gets attacked for representing the worst of modern pop, but she's a gawky 13-year-old amateur backed up by a Z-grade production company. If you need to rail against dumb, soulless music, Jessie J is a far better target.
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