Who You Are

Quite honestly, Ke$ha is just more fun to listen to, even though Jessie J may ultimately have more career longevity. It's a decent enough album for the teenage dance set though.

These ambitiously sung songs make for tremendous chaos: the lyrics about uplift are often trite, the furiously modern arrangements are often cliched.

Who You Are tries very hard to swagger, but it trips over its own feet and continues to self-consciously limp on through thirteen tracks, as if to suggest that's its hobbling is its normal walk.

In trying to be an über-pop-star, she ends up becoming an every-pop-star.

It's well-meaning, well-crafted and confused. Sometimes versatility can be a vice.

Who You Are is a singularly ironic title for a debut that finds Jessie J trying on discarded threads from every British pop starlet of the last half decade.

Unfortunately, the songs on Who You Are that allow Jessie J's ugly, born-that-way vocals to cut loose are in the distinct minority. In the quest to find herself, she seems to have gotten sidetracked.

Who You Are doesn't entirely deliver, but even when its songs fall short of the promised hype, their potential is obvious.

What it's not, though, is a collection that confirms the arrival of a significant solo talent. It's too patchy, too hurried, the powers behind it too eager to capitalise on the artist's current chart success.

Weirdest of all, though, is that no matter how much Jessie J sings about being herself, we don't really ever get a sense of who, or what, that is.

Divested of the slowies, this would have been a fine pop record.

She harmonises piquantly with herself over the languid guitar groove, and B.o.B's rap is pleasingly modest enough, too. The same can't really be said of such tracks as "Casualty Of Love" and "Rainbow", however, both singularly unimpressive songs tricked out with the showy vocal bling favoured by R&B divas as a substitute for genuine soul.

It plays like a very conventional, early-90s pop record.

She's still one to watch, but the hype which preceded the release of Who You Are promised much more than what has been delivered.