It’s clearly a busy time for Jessie J. Her gig at the Harbourside on June 27 will be her 43rd this year after touring most of the planet for her third album Sweet Talker. And it seems especially hectic right now. When the What’s On gets five minutes with her over the phone ahead of her Bristol gig, it sounds like a potential airport nightmare has just been averted.
“We lost a bag at the airport,” says Jessie – who has just arrived in Copenhagan. “It had shoes and toiletries – a lot of toiletries, I’m a toiletry fiend. Basically, I would have been really dirty, and had no makeup,” she laughs.
But apart from this, all seems to be going well with the tour and the singer is clearly in her element. Over the last week she has played in Barcelona and Lisbon – where she actually managed to have a few days off. Before the current Europe tour, she was in Australia, Asia and the USA – which means she’s been on the move pretty much constantly for the last seven months.
But it sees like the relentless touring comes with the territory for the singer. In the last few years she has made the leap from being essentially a very successful UK performer to a full-blown global star, thanks to growing support in the US and Australia.
Jessie J, the English pop star and newly added coach on the fourth season of the hit reality singing show The Voice, doesn’t pause when asked to recall her own worst audition. It was a casting call for the stage musical Annie and an excited eight-year-old Jessica Cornish sang Tomorrow so loudly that she was one of just two young girls, out of more than 100, initially asked to leave the hall.
“I cried my heart out, but my mum said to me, ‘When a door closes in your face it means that you have to find another door’,” remembers Jessie, who has had a pair of top-five singles in Australia in the past 12 months. “Soon after, I was cast in my first lead, in Whistle Down the Wind, and the show ran for two years. That failed audition was one of the most awful, but insightful, moments of my life.”
Now it’s Jessie’s job, alongside this year’s fellow coaches, Ricky Martin, Delta Goodrem and the partnership of Joel Madden and his twin brother Benji, to bring the same sense of satisfaction to what has been one of Channel Nine’s biggest hits since it debuted in 2012.
“I’m very honest and very constructive. I like people to go home with something,” she says. “With me, if someone tells me no, whether now or when I was eight years old, I wanted to know why. The artists don’t want to be told, ‘You’re amazing, but no thanks.’ That doesn’t make them any better.”
Two gorgeous shots of Jessie’s new photoshoot have been uploaded, as well as the cover!
She took posing with figs and thistles in her stride:
Fuelled by chocolate crossiants, set designer Beatrice Hurst spent over fours hours creating the decadent set for our December cover. Inspired by old master paintings it consisted of 300 flowers including roses, hydrangeas, thistle, artichokes and kangaroo blooms, 25 plums, 2 bunches of grapes, 10 white candlesticks, and err two animal skulls. Plus one chaise lounge that Jessie wanted to keep to nap on.
She adheres to a strict diet:
But it’s to preserve her vocal chords not her waistline. A two-page rider was headlined: “No nuts, pineapple, kiwi fruit, cheese or red meat.” Alcohol and caffeine are out too. But Lindt chocolate melted into ice-cream is her weakness.
She’s thought about quitting:
“I’ve had many moments when I’ve thought, ‘This is it. I’m not going to be able to do what I want to do anymore. It was my label going, ‘Is she selling enough? Is she healthy enough?Is she willing to be sexual enough?’ I had to discover all those attitudes by myself, and deal with them.”
Doctors told her she would never walk again after suffering a stroke:
“I was like, you f******* watch me. The doctor that said that I hope they bought my album. Three times over!”
She’s doesn’t mind being called a diva:
“It comes with the territory, sadly. Yes, I’m passionate, very direct and honest, and I know that can come across as rudeness but, honestly, it’s not!”
She wasn’t happy being labeled bisexual:
“I felt like it was affecting my life and my career, being branded as something I’ve never said that I was. I don’t want to be labelled, and that’s it really. I’ve always apologised if I’ve offended anyone, too; I never meant to.”
She doesn’t want to be with someone for the sake of it:
“Any guy I meet now, I’m like, ‘Are you a husband? Are you a dad?” Her two biggest dreams? “I want to be a worldwide superstar, and a mum and a wife.”
Check out the full behind-the-scenes video below and for the full interview pick up your issue of the December issue of InStyle, on newsstands from the 6th November.
Jessie recorded the Halloween Special for ‘Celebrity Juice’ last night. Remember to watch tonight at 10pm on ITV2.