Jessie J (pop star, future icon, blathering imbecile) is either the most cynical woman in the world or blurring the boundary between idealism and idiocy to previously unfathomable levels. She sings a jaunty, happy sounding song called 'Price Tag' which Wikipedia helpfully informs us:
"is about Jessie J trying to make the world dance by forgetting about how much money we have."
It's a call to arms for the entire world to stop concentrating on material goods and just simply to let the love in. Then we'd all feel better, and everything would be fine. Essentially it's a Disney version of 'Imagine' by John Lennon, where someone who has more money than us tells us we should probably give up all our possessions.
John Lennon, incidentally, wasn't a very nice man. He wrote some very, very good songs ('Imagine' wasn't one of them), but he was also a bell-end who got shot at precisely the right point in his life to maintain his legacy. Seriously, if he'd released any more increasingly-pish solo albums he'd probably have been so bereft of critical acclaim that he'd have sprinted right onto the stage at Live Aid to help Paul McCartney. It doesn't help that all that was truly great about the man has been diluted through a series of over-adulating pricks who revere all things at the Church of Lennon while simultaneously missing most of the points he made and misrepresenting him horribly.
Jessie J, meanwhile, is no John Lennon. Not even John Lennon on a really bad day when he was recording himself shitting through a colander onto a bean bag with extra reverb. Jessie J's previous career was writing songs for smiley-Queen-of-pre-reality-check-dawning-tweenager Miley Cyrus. And Chris Brown. I don't think I've ever heard a Chris Brown song, but I do know that he and Charlie Sheen should be rohyphonoled, made up in drag, and then locked in a room together until they finish beating each other up, probably some time around 2014.
The label Jessie's album is out on is Universal Music. It's fair to say they're probably not the most relaxed label when it comes to distribution of their music. Then again, Jessie J is stating over and over again in 'Price Tag' that we shouldn't care about the money, just to get the world healed and having a good time together as one.
'Price Tag' is 79p to download on Amazon. Or you can buy the whole single package for £3.99, or the album for £7.00.
Obviously if we are to stop caring about the money and dance around for a bit, we're going to have to strut our stuff to a different song. One that is, y'know, free. Because if material possessions aren't important and the whole world needs to hear Jessie's message then logically none of her songs shouldn't be available for free upon request from either herself or her label. That or her song doesn't really mean anything and is a hollow and vacuous, if jaunty, piece of inane babble. When you listen to a song by Lady Gaga you don't generally think 'Oh, this is an interesting point about society she's making', you think, 'Hmm, this would be really good if it didn't go on for about twelve minutes and she wasn't such a massive attention whore'. But crucially her songs don't generally wear their earnestness and idealism on their sleeves. They're simply catchy, silly playground chants that you can dance to, with a hint of underlying meaning that's there if you want it.
Jessie J is claiming that she wants to make the world a better place. Oh really, Jessie? Well, let's go out to Somalia shall we and see how well they react to their message there. Have they heard your song? No. They don't have 79p to download it from Amazon. They don't even have an Amazon account. You could hum it for them I suppose. Yes! That's working! Look at them dance! Look at them - oh, wait, no, that was just the death throes of an infant born with HIV. Sorry. False alarm.
I suppose if we hadn't bought your album we could've given the money to charity or something, but then if we hadn't bought your album how would we know about all the bad things in the world? It's a tough decision. Really, for the good of mankind, it's essential that you download Jessie J's album right now and learn its message about the futility of capitalism even though you know for a fact that a child's internal organs have just collapsed in the Third World as a direct result of this never-ending cycle of hypocrisy. Because if you save a child's life today it'll still die in a harsh and unforgiving world where people aren't singing and dancing and having fun but instead are buying shit albums made by people detached from reality who appear to have written songs specifically to be played at school discos.
In Jessie J world the fact that, apart from money, we're all still human beings and that is a new and vital discovery. Presumably she was brought up in a very 'Britain for the British' household where it was forbidden to spend money on foreign aid projects while there were still problems in Britain because apparently 'Britain' is a place where we lack the most basic fucking compassion.
Or possibly Jessie J knows that her message is complete bollocks, but that it'll chime perfectly with a young un's idealistic streak about how the world is shit and stuff an' we should all totally get together and fix it.
Right after we've worked out a dance routine to the new Keisha single.
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