All The Way Up

NextUp: Jessie James

Since this is a Christian-based blog, I’d like to caution you by letting you know that the article’s subject, singer Jessie James, does not produce Christian music and therefore some of her songs contain some suggestive content and that this article discusses James’s career and her music from a professional critical standpoint, not a Christian one.

Jessie James has all the elements that it takes to be to this decade what Daisy Duke was to the 80’s: The looks, the name, the attitude- and she knows it. In fact, she’s really pretty up-front in letting us know about it in the lyrics to her songs, which range in style from pop to country to rap. The 21-year-old James, who burst onto the music scene in a big way recently, is signed to the Island/Def Jam label, and has all the traits (both looks and personality-wise) that, once fame arrives, will have guys wanting her and girls wishing they could be her. James exudes confidence and oozes sex appeal (in fact, Maxim has already caught onto this, already having featured her). She’s not even one of those singers that has a cool name only to find out they were born something different- her parents indeed gave her the name Jessica James when she was born in 1988. So the name and the fact that she was born in Italy made James automatically cool right from birth. She graduated from a rural Georgia high school in 2007, and has since signed to Mercury/Def Jam, released music on iTunes and in stores, had a song featured in a movie (the rap-esque “Blue Jeans” in “Confessions of a Shopoholic”), teamed up with Kara DioGuardi to write some songs on her debut album, and toured with the Jonas Brothers.

As for her music, it’s a very, very pop-sounding country, with hints of rap (“Blue Jeans”) thrown in. James has a mostly original sound, at times reminding me of  Deanna Carter and Christina Aguilera in some way or another. The lyrics are those that will probably be popular mostly among girls and young women just as Taylor Swift’s are, only much less innocent- the less innocent/sex appeal factor probably being the only one that might pull in any male fans. The punchline from her debut single, “Wanted,” sounds innocent enough- “I only want to be wanted by you”- but the verses that support the chorus provide more detail that’s better off not to be heard (or at least understood) by the young fans that James surely has. The secondtrack on the self-titled abum, “Bullet,” is about a hard-to-get/explosive girl who’s not to be messed with, which also has a couple innuendos, and prominently features these lines that sum up the boldness she portrays: “Why do you think they call me Jessie James? Sweet as a peach, impossible to tame…” The next song is yet another self-confidence booster titled “I Look So Good (Without You).” The song, one of the hallmarks of the album and written by James, discusses all the positive qualities about her looks and attempts to make an ex who dumped her jealous, while the track “Burning Bridges” speaks to leaving relationships behind without blazing a trail behind you. Another interesting track on the album that was also written by James is “Psycho Girlfriend,” which is lyrically just as the title sounds- a glimpse inside the mind of a jealous girlfriend, written from the secon-person point-of-view. The rest of the album overall is pretty solid, but I only pointed out the standout tracks. So go download the album from Amazon for eight bucks and you should be pleased. In the meantime, time will tell if fans have a positive opinion of James’s overconfident style.