Jesy Nelson, a failure to launch

I’ve done a bad thing. - Jesy Nelson

I feel genuinely at a loss for words when considering former Little Mix member Jesy Nelson. It’s not that she’s a particularly interesting enigma in the world of pop music – English or otherwise – and more that I’ve never seen this type of car wreck happen before. As she releases the second of her solo singles after a near two-year break, the entire vision of what it means to be a solo artist for her just feels more fragmented than before.

I guess the question should be “why did Jesy Nelson go solo?”, but that answer cannot be found in fluffy interviews from the time of her split with her girl group. There’s a lot of vagueness from that time, lots of insinuations, but very little actual accusations. It would appear to be a series of creative differences, to take her responses into account.

But if we’re being honest, that is the wrong direction to ask the question. We’re not really interested in her personal reasons for wanting to make solo music. She entered a reality singing show with the intention of being a singing superstar on her own. The girls she shared a stage with for nearly a decade weren’t childhood friends, they were put together by a panel of judges.

No, the question is more about what the label saw in her.

The answer should be obvious. Usually, when one member of a girl group stakes their claim as the first one to release solo material, it’s because they’ve got an especially mobilised fanbase, or just a general aura of superiority. There’s something about them that stands out, even if it’s just ambition. But in Nelson’s case, it’s a bit stranger than that.

In the 2010s, we’ve seen a new type of celebrity rise, and that’s one that I’d describe as surviving off of pity. Usually this is a young woman going through some form of public pain, these are people who are just tragic enough to earn empathy from a public still reeling in guilt from the 2000s brand of tabloid harassment. They’re big on their own right prior to any of this happening, but the extra attention makes them almost tragic superstars. Jesy Nelson is undoubtably someone who seemed primed for this type of attention; at the time of her exit from the group, she was already a figure of pity.

There’s no way to say this delicately, Jesy Nelson was framed from the beginning of her career as the ugly member of Little Mix. It was, quite simply, the narrative of the group that was outside of their control. No amount of lip filler, fake tan, or weight loss could help it. This isn’t to say that she is or isn’t ugly, but more that this was what the focus was. Not only was she targeted by news outlets and the general public for her looks, but she was immediately accessible online. It all came to a head in 2019 with a documentary detailing her struggles in the public eye. She left the group in 2020. You would think that was a curtain close for her career, and for many, it was just that.

If you were to do a rough estimate on name recognition for the girls of Little Mix following the media storm around that documentary and her later admission of a suicide attempt in 2013, Jesy Nelson would have seemed like a hot property. Her fans were praising her en masse. Purely on metrics, an executive with poor data analysis skills would have felt stupid to not sign her. So came a deal with Polydor Records, a scion of Universal, and the beginning of hype.

"For me, this is the music that I've always wanted to make. I don't think that anyone is gonna expect this." – Jesy Nelson, 2021

‘Boyz’ is, to put it simply, a poor choice for a debut, solo single. No, scratch that. ‘Boyz’ is a poor single choice for Jesy Nelson. It’s a bad decision in both the artistic and commercial sense. A display of hubris not seen in pop music since Madonna decided to release ‘American Life’ with that lead single.

From a purely musical perspective, it’s a mediocre attempt to sex up her image and align herself with a nostalgic style of R’n’B that the London-born Nelson just could not handle. Her delivery is nasal and too vibrato heavy, calling to mind the worst of the Christina Aguilera clones of the 2000s. Production wise, it’s completely middle of the road. Production duo Loose Change have touched many of the UK’s biggest pop stars, from Rita Ora to Little Mix themselves, but the results are usually pretty banal. The sample could have given it life, but instead sits as a reminder of a better material.

Then, of course, there was Nicki Minaj. I feel like I shouldn’t need to acknowledge the verse Minaj provided on ‘Boyz’, other than to say it’s her standard and short burst of bravado that you either love or get bored by. But what does need to be recognized is how little chemistry the two have. There’s no interplay between the verse and the rest of the song. Minaj’s best work-for-hire moments are explosive and fun, weaving into the hooks and finding common ground with whoever had the cash to pull her into the studio. Half a minute of nothing that takes a weirdly aggressive stance that was reflected in her one piece of promotion via Instagram Live.

But the worst of it was the video. Dressed up in a Beyonce wig and tanned just as dark as Minaj, Nelson curled her lip and danced down the street in baggy pants. There’s been plenty of great takedowns of the entire mess, but I wanted to at least note it here. This isn’t just racist and insulting to the artists she claimed to inspire her. The entire routine was just pathetic. Even if the wider cultural conversation hadn’t been primed to discuss white artists taking on black aesthetics, this would have raised eyebrows.

The video was also incredibly corny, but that’s beside the point. It’s just bad.

What was left by the end of the year was a product that nobody was particularly inspired by. While she debuted in the top ten in the UK, Nelson didn’t even chart in the US, where she had clearly set her sights. Support poured in for her former group mates, and specifically for Leigh-Anne Pinnock, who spoke publicly about the racist abuse she had received in the group, muddying the waters of Nelson’s own story that had been raised as a singular victim. It quickly petered out everywhere, and performances in December of that year were mocked on social media. The jig was up, the song was terrible, and Nelson hid away. A few months later she was quietly dropped from Polydor Records.

That’s what brings us to her latest, independent offering. Gone is the posturing and nasality, and in is a soft, ethereal vocal that sounds infinitely more comfortable for her. Produced by the same production team as ‘Boyz’, it’s pleasant and clean, sitting closer to blue-eyed soul than hip-hop.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Nelson’s appearance has not softened one iota in the time between singles. If anything, she seems to have gone darker, and no amount of 1960s styling can hide it. The darkness of her tan is conspicuous throughout the music video, particularly when she stands under brought lights with scene partners not as bronzed as she is.

Speaking of the video, Nelson plays a victim of domestic violence that struggles to leave her abusive partner. This is a collaboration with Women’s Aid, a domestic violence charity that provided insight to ensure the story being told was well and appropriately told. I want to acknowledge that because it’s a cause that deserves respect.

“Jesy’s video highlights that it is not easy to leave an abusive relationship and for many women using our network of services across the country, the average length of time in abusive relationships before leaving is just over six years." – Women’s Aid

‘Bad Thing’ is, more than anything else, a reintroduction to Jesy Nelson for pop audiences that rejected the type of superstardom ‘Boyz’ attempted to project. It’s a jazzy little number about a toxic relationship that takes its cues from Lana Del Rey, Adele, and (weirdly) Madison Beer, using the lush production to position her as a something significantly more palatable. She doesn’t have ability to project the same emotionality of any of those singers, but she handles herself without embarrassment.

The song is itself, fine. A solid little number that might scratch an itch for a certain demographic. The performance is satisfactory, and it thematically fits with the video without distracting from the message. Generically tragic, but not tragically generic. You might even see it chart in the UK. But I do wonder if this will be enough to salvage the wreckage that ‘Boyz’ left her career in?

Jesy Nelson thought she had the chops to make it on her own. Maybe she could have, with smarter choices. We’ll never know because those choices simply weren’t made. Now on year three of her solo venture, and this is song two. No features, no appearances, no hype. Just an independent artist releasing music that sounds like other, better artists.