It's a state of affairs compounded by a noticeable absence of the kind of stubborn hooks that caused Jessie J's 2011 hit Price Tag to lodge in your head whether you liked it or not, and by the fact that there's a weird void where the singer should be. She can certainly sing, albeit in the grandstanding all-talent-and-no-taste style that guarantees a standing ovation on The X Factor. I Miss Her, a ballad dealing with the improbable subject of Alzheimer's, would be infinitely more affecting if she dialled down her performance a bit. Instead, she starts breaking out the melismas after about 20 seconds and goes progressively more bananas from there on in. The effect is distracting, like a heartfelt and tender eulogy being read out by a pantomime dame who keeps flashing her sequined bloomers and shooting fireworks out of her wig.
Whatever else you make of her, it's hard to argue that Jessie J is blandly characterless. If you're going to have the kind of pop star who acts as a tweenage role model, it might as well be a woman with a shaved head who handled the Sun's customarily tactful investigation into her sexuality – "Jessie Gay" ran the front-page headline – with laudable insouciance: "I've never denied it – get over it." But you'd never guess that from her lyrics, which have nothing to offer but tired self-help cliches, hollow girls-night-out cheerleading – Sexy Lady virtually turns up in a pink stretch limo, waving an inflatable penis – and what you might politely term a slightly contradictory attitude to that great pop bugbear of our times, The Haters. "Don't you get tired of being rude?" asks It's My Party, which is a fair question, but one you should perhaps think twice about asking if the chorus of one of the other songs on your album goes: "Excuse my rude [sic] but I really ****ing hate you."
Of course, none of this would matter if the choruses velcroed themselves to your brain: you could level a lot of the same criticisms at her debut album, Who You Are, and that sold 2.5m copies and spawned six top 10 singles. Instead, they just drift past, never latching on. And perhaps that's what her US record company mean when they say the album isn't ready yet: as it stands, Alive is too easy to ignore.