Jessie J - Sweet Talker (Album Review)

Even the album art is annoying.

It would be nice if an artist like Jessie J would be the kind of artist who reshapes the pop landscape. It would be nice if an artist like Jessie J used the talents she has for singing, performing and just being a Popstar and released consistently good records. It’s no secret that she’s not really done any of that so far. With one of the most distinctive voices in pop music she should be ruling the charts, figuratively killing all of her competitors. If in combat, she used her last album Alive as a shield, she’d be dead. It wasn’t a terrible album, but commercially it was a disaster in comparison to the immense success of her debut Who You Are. Now she’s back with third opus (or attempt at artistry) Sweet Talker and we are all hoping it’s a return to the sass that fuelled Do It Like a Dude and the pop mastery of Domino. 

It isn’t. Jessie can rest easy at night that she hasn’t released the worst album of all time, however it’s not much ‘harder’ than her last effort which she herself deemed “too soft” and it’s not much better either. Where Alive did succeed was with predictable yet memorable (on occasion) hooks on the likes of Wild and Daydreamin’. Here, we’ve got Jessie J frantically trying to piece together the fragments of her broken reputation as if she’s trying to inject the generic into the album’s circulatory system to get sales figures up. For once it would be nice to hear her experiment and leave musical reliability to P!nk.


The album’s downfall is predictability. Opener Ain’t Been Done is mediocre, featuring rapid vocal tics echoing her debut, but it shows no sign of Jessie stepping forward as an artist. It would slide easily into the track listing for Who You Are. Then there’s the unsurprising Said Too Much, which although is actually one of the album’s stronger tracks it’s really just standard pop fair. The album gets frustrating with Fire and Loud, two songs that miss out on being great by using repetition to compensate for a lack of imagination and Masterpiece is self indulgent self empowerment which has Jessie calling out her haters with “you haven’t seen the best of me!”. Is this intentional irony and perhaps a hint that this is all some silly joke before the seriously amazing music is released? Another concern is that Jessie doesn’t have input on all the tracks on the album, in fact she only has writing credits on five of the 12 tracks. Is this down to a lack of faith from her record label or is this her attempt at experimentation?

The sound of the album is, like her debut, inconsistent. A pop album is generally never all one sound, that would be uninteresting. However, there needs to be something in the productions that creates a fluid movement through the track listing. For example, the latest Little Mix album Salute is pop at its best and it’s straightforward too. No fuss, just great pop music and the vibe of the album cements the whole thing together. Sweet Talker should have been a soul album. When you hear Keep Us Together you’ll understand why I’m saying this. Her vocals are controlled and at times gorgeous, on top of soft soul beats and an incredible chorus. If the entire album followed this ‘vibe’ it would have been a great move for Jessie J as an artist. Why a song like this is on the same album as Burnin’ Up, a steaming turd of a song with no charm, character or authenticity. It’s one of the worst songs I’ve had the displeasure of hearing, ever, and the unnecessary vocal tinkering makes it even more infuriating and don’t get me started on the Slave 4 U panting rip off. Then you have Max Martin’s soul stomper Bang Bang featuring Nicki Minaj and Ariana Grande. It’s the song that saves Sweet Talker from being a complete mess and is in fact one of the most infectious songs of 2014, whether you like it or not.

Sweet Talker isn’t a creative success; It’s a frustrating record. Everyone knows Jessie J can sing and this album reinforces that already universally known fact. Her voice is incredible and her range potentially unbeatable in the pop circuit. Ye ye you can sing, we know! What Jessie J needs is an album of Bang Bangs and Keep Us Togethers. That would be a decent album and she can get Ariana and Nicki in on all the songs if she bloody wants, as long as the album actually goes somewhere, shows imagination and has a clear theme. Rather than complaining about the haters and how “they won’t stop until they tear you down” why not take extra time to record an album that they can stick in their pipe and smoke. 

1.5 / 5