You’ll have had your T, Jessie?

Published on 05/07/2012 14:31

THE last time Jessie J was on these pages, back in October, she was saying how manic her life had become.

“It’s a bit like taking on ten jobs,” said the star with the Cleopatra hairdo. “I wanted to be a singer, but now I’ve had to become a model, a spokesperson, a good interviewee... everything.”

Back then, it had just been announced that she was to become a vocal coach on BBC talent show The Voice - a role which earned her praise and criticism in equal measure.

“The negative stuff doesn’t matter when compared to all the incredible things that came out of it, and it was nice for people to get to know my personality,” says the singer, who returns to Scottish soil this weekend for a main stage appearance at T in the Park.

“It’s great to be respected at that level so early on in my career, but I’ve not made my mind up yet whether I’d wanna do it again.”

Whatever she decides, the 24-year-old Essex girl is now one of the most recognisable pop stars on the planet, having sold more than 12 million copies of her debut album around the world. After such enormous success, she admits the pressure is really on to produce a second album that matches her first.

“It took me seven years to get people interested in the first album, so the pressure weighs heavy on my shoulders with the anticipation of the second,” she says.

Fortunately, this time she’s now in such demand that she can pretty much pick and choose who she collaborates with.

“I want to get Ed Sheeran and Tinie Tempah on there, but I’d also love to work with Rihanna and Beyonce,” she reveals. “It has to happen organically, depending on who’s around.”

To many, it looked as if Jessie J had arrived fully-formed with an armful of hit songs when she broke through a couple of years ago - but she was no overnight sensation.

When she was 11, she was cast in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s West End production of Whistle Down The Wind. Then, having started to take music seriously in her teens, she was signed to a record label as a solo artist shortly after her 17th birthday.

“I’d been in a girl band for two years before that, but that didn’t come off,” she explains.

After her first brush with the music industry came to nothing, she began trying to sell the songs she’d written to other artists, with a great deal of success.

The singer has written for Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys and Miley Cyrus - yet she’s reluctant to call herself a songwriter.

“It’s kind of come across in interviews like that’s my main thing and being an artist is second, but that’s not it at all,” she says.

The Domino hitmaker went down a storm at the recent, and very muddy Isle of Wight Festival - and she’s hoping for better weather when she visits Balado this weekend for another open-air gig.

The singer, whose real name is Jessica Cornish, was due to play Scotland’s biggest music festival last summer - but she was forced to cancel having snapped a bone in her left foot after toppling over when rehearsing for a show in a pair of towering heels.

“Maybe the high-heels I wore were a bit crazy,” she laughs. “I don’t think I’ll wear them again.”

Jessie J, T in the Park, Main Stage, Saturday