Jessie J is a pop music veteran. The 33-year-old Brit splashed onto the scene in 2011 with “Price Tag,” and the bops have been coming ever since. From the punchy electro-pop banger “Domino” to the tectonic-plate-shifting “Bang Bang” and, a personal favorite of mine, “Burnin' Up,” Jessie J knows how to deliver a song that sticks in your head and shows off her impressive pipes.
She continues this tradition with “I Want Love,” her latest single released earlier this summer. It's a bright, bombastic tune, and she's never sounded better. That's because with this song (and the album coming soon), Jessie's main focus is having fun. “Look, I'm 33. This is my fifth album,” she tells me. “I really just want to make songs that celebrate what makes me special and what I know I can do that some other people can't.”
The tracks Jessie J opened up about for Glamour's 5 Songs, 5 Stories column are perfect examples of this. They're all beautifully, quintessentially her. Read on to learn the origin stories behind “Price Tag,” “Bang Bang,” and more.
“I Want Love”
Jessie J's latest single is an anthemic, disco-fied ode to, well, wanting love. It has all the hallmarks of a classic Jessie J tune: a thumping bass line, killer vocals, and a shimmery, earworm chorus. It's coproduced by hitmaker Ryan Tedder, who's worked with Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, and Katy Perry, among others.
I was in a relationship, and we had done this huge red carpet. Afterward, we got into an argument, and I drove to a bar and got drunk with random people I'd never met before. You know when you're stuck in a rut and need to do something really out of your comfort zone? You almost feel like you're training for a fight but without fighting someone? Like Rocky, almost? That's how I felt when I was in the bar that night. This was a couple years ago, and I just remember going into the mirror and looking at myself saying, “You deserve everything.” I was tipsy and I was just like, “You're going to be okay.” I remember speaking to my friends and my family and being like, “I just want love. I want the fire, the passion. I want to break the rules. I want to work through things.”
When I was with Ryan [Tedder, the coproducer] and we started talking about this idea—he already had an idea that I then teamed with my idea with this song. There's so many people that make amazing music I could never make and vice versa. With “I Want Love,” I was like, I just want it to be big singing. I want it to feel classic, I want it to feel musical, I want it to feel timeless, and I want it to feel fun and diva-y and performance-y. The kind of thing you hear and you want to run and perform it. When “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” comes on and and there's that guitar, you go, “Oh my God.” When “I Want Love” starts, I just see people grabbing a hairbrush and singing into it.
“Big White Room”
Easily one of her most emotional songs to date, “Big White Room” is based on an experience Jessie J had while in the hospital as a child. A live version of the track is available on her debut album. She tells me she could never muster up the right emotions to deliver this song in a studio—she needs to feel the audience.
When I was nine, I had an ablation. I have WPW, which is Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. It's a heart disease, and I've had it since I was a kid. It's weird because every time I was in hospital—as much as I was in hospital with a heart disease, it never felt like my purpose in being there was to feel like I was sick. It always felt like I was there to hold the other kids' hands in the ward. I would be the kid that would walk around and hand out magazines. I don't remember in my head being in pain. I know I was, and I know I struggled and I had seizure and all these things, but I never felt like I was experiencing something as traumatic as everybody else.
So I remember sitting and watching this boy and wanting to help and feeling really helpless. That was the biggest emotion I remember feeling, as well as confusion of what was happening. I couldn't really register the fact that he was praying to a god. I wasn't brought up in a major religious family, so it was the first time I'd experienced someone pleading with God to keep them here. So when I woke up the next day and he'd died, I remember saying to my mom, “He asked God so nicely to stay, and he's not here.” My mom said, “Sometimes God needs his angels nearer to him.”
I didn't write about that experience thinking it was going on an album because I didn't have a record deal at that time. It was one of the first songs I ever wrote, and there was no structure. I needed to write it just because I needed to write it and get it out of my head, and almost make it make sense to myself. I remember the day I wrote it. It was on this huge, fat, old computer in my mom and dad's spare room, and it was to a backing track that sounded like The Lion King. Obviously we had it reworked, and I ended up putting a live version on the album.
“Price Tag” (feat. B.o.B)
“Price Tag” was Jessie J's breakthrough single, reaching number one in eight countries. Cowritten by some of the 2010s' biggest hitmakers—including Claude Kelly, who you also can thank for “Circus” by Britney Spears—the song is undeniably catchy but actually tackles some lofty issues.
The only reason I felt like maybe “Price Tag” was [a hit] was that, when we were in the studio writing it, everybody—Max Martin, Claude Kelly, everybody—was like, “Yo, this is massive.” And I was like, “Do they say that to everyone?” I was so young. I had written “Party in the U.S.A,” and I knew that had done something major. But I was still like, “Is it a hit or are people just kissing my ass?”
I've never, ever presumed that something was going to go. “Price Tag” came out at such an interesting time in the world. It's funny because people would sing, “Money, money, money,” but the lyrics and the verses are really serious. It's a really strong story about me feeling like I was a statistic and not a person and feeling like a number and not feeling appreciated. It's definitely interesting how songs can just go, you know? You really have no control.
[With songwriting] I like to take 10% of the experiences I've had and exaggerate it. “Price Tag” was about a handful of men, especially in the industry, that made me feel like I was this piece of meat. The lyrics, “It seems like everybody's got a price. I wonder how they sleep at night when the sale comes first and the truth comes second. Just stop for a minute and smile.”
Everyone was so serious and everything was so showy and so blasé and unemotional and unconnected. Everything was about business, and that's not why I did what I did. It was funny, because “Price Tag” made me the most money in my life. “It's not about money, money, money”—but it's basically kept me able to live the life I live and support my family and stuff. It was a really interesting experience to have so early on and so young. I was, what, 22? When I listen back to the song now, it's funny. People sing the chorus and are like, “It's so catchy.” But the lyrics are very serious and important to my story and what I was going through at the time.
“Bang Bang” (feat. Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj)
Unsurprisingly, pop super-producer Max Martin is the brains behind “Bang Bang,” a gargantuan hit for Jessie J, Grande, and Minaj. The song was everywhere in 2014, peaking at number three on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.
“Bang Bang” was a song that already existed. I didn't write “Bang Bang.” Max Martin wrote “Bang Bang,” and Ariana had been played it, I'd been played it, and we both loved it. We just said, “Why don't we both do it?” So Ariana stayed on the second verse, I recorded the first verse, and then Nicki was played it in the studio and was like, “I've got to jump on this.” We didn't go to her and ask; she wanted to do it. I'll never forget: I was in my bedroom in my flat in London, and I got sent the version with Nicki on it. I just sat at the end of my bed holding my phone, staring at the floor, going, “How the fuck did I land this?” I literally felt like I'd won a competition.
Let's be honest: For as much as songs like that are my bag all day, every day, “Bang Bang” would have never done what it did without them. The gratitude I have and, honestly, the experience of girl power. Since “Moulin Rouge,” there hasn't really been a big female song that's come that's really impacted like that. Me and Ari just spoke the other day, and I was like, “We should definitely do something together.” And she was like, “If we do, it has to be better than ‘Bang Bang.’” And I was like, “Well...” She was like, “I don't know,” and I was like, “I don't know.” Because it's just one of those songs that just caught and went.
The three of us met for the first time at the video shoot, and the song was already number one the day we were shooting the video. Nicki was only there for an hour and a half, and we were just so giddy, all of us. I remember all of us being on set, and I remember us taking a selfie. I remember going, “I literally feel like I'm a fan in the back of the picture.” I just remember laughing. Ariana's one of the funniest people ever. Our personalities and humor are super dry. We also were big-ing each other up! It was such a celebratory moment. All of us were just giggling and enjoying being around each other. It was great.
Even when we performed it [at the 2014 American Music Awards]. Ari wanted to do the chair thing. I wanted to be more free. I don't love being choreographed. That's why I walked down the seat aisles and picked people that I wanted to dance with, like Taylor [Swift] and Khloé Kardashian. We all put our own little personalities in there. I love working with them both. They're so incredible, and they've both gone on to be two of the biggest artists in the world.
“Not My Ex”
R.O.S.E., released 2018, was Jessie J's last proper pop album. (Her next one is due out this year.) Almost all the tracks on it were written just by Jessie and one other person, Darhyl Camper. Split into four sections (Realizations, Obsessions, Sex, and Empowerment), “Not My Ex” appears under “Obsessions.” It's a moving ballad that Jessie says was very hard for her to create.
I think any person can understand that the ages of 27 to 30, you're just kind of going, “What is going on? Who am I? Do I like my clothes? Do I make enough money? Am I happy with my life? Do I like where I live?” Everything is being reevaluated. You're not a kid anymore, but you're not an adult. You're kind of in this weird interim, and there are all these expectations that you put on yourself. I remember, as a woman, going, “Stop comparing yourself to everyone and anybody that isn't you.” I remember being in really too many toxic dating situations over a few years. “Not My Ex” was actually a song that I wrote over three years. So the first verse is about a different person than the second verse. I wanted to write about all these people, and then when I met this other person, I was like, “Please don't think that I'm them, and I don't want to think that you're them.”
You know when you sit on a date, and you ask them what their favorite color is and they say orange? And that was your crazy ex's favorite color, so you're like, “No, no, no, no, no.” The way you self-sabotage. For me, the song was about really embracing the person I was behind the camera, but bringing it to the person in front of the camera. Knowing it was a topic of conversation I feel is so common with people at that age, who are trying to work out who they are, I wanted to write a song about it.
I felt like it was a really powerful self-love-in-a-different-kind-of-way song. It's definitely one of my favorite songs, and it's one of the hardest songs I've ever written. It's such a fucking hard song to sing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Christopher Rosa is the entertainment editor at Glamour. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.