Jessie J’s triumphant return puts lucrative Chinese market in spotlight

Original article by Amy Hawkins in Beijing

One week after announcing she was “cancer free”, the British pop star Jessie J did what any recovering patient would do and travelled thousands of miles around the world to perform for an audience of more than a billion people.

On 29 May, the singer-songwriter, whose real name is Jessica Cornish, belted out a stage-rattling rendition of Frank Sinatra’s My Way on the stage of Singer, a hugely popular Chinese singing competition similar to The Voice. She also performed her new song, California, briefly adapting the lyrics to change California to Changsha, the Chinese city where Singer is hosted.

Returning to China was really “nostalgic”, Cornish wrote to her 821,600 followers on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. “The fact that I’m still so widely recognised and loved by everyone means more to me than people can imagine.”

Cornish says she was “instantly hooked” on China. “I just think in life you should go where you’re celebrated and I feel so celebrated there,” she told the Guardian.

One Jessie J fan wrote on Weibo: “In China, everyone thinks no one in the world can sing better than you.”

In a country of 1.4 billion people, having less than a million followers does not exactly make you a household name. But there is no denying that Cornish’s pivot to China, which came at moment when her career in the west seemed to be floundering, has allowed her to tap into a lucrative market – and other western pop stars are trying to follow suit.

Cornish first burst on to the Chinese scene in 2018 when she entered, and won, that year’s series of Singer, a show that can garner more than 20bn views for a single episode. Back then, the potential of the Chinese market was already evident.

Hundreds of millions of digitally-savvy and culturally hungry young music fans had already created an energetic music scene that was rapidly growing. The government had recently cracked down on illegal music streaming, strengthening copyright protections and earning potential for musicians. Since 2018, the Chinese recorded music market has climbed up the global ranks from seventh biggest to fourth, recently overtaking Germany.

Chinese stars have always been dominant, a trend that has intensified since the Covid-19 pandemic. Covid “raised the bar for how interesting you have to be to the Chinese music consumer in order for it to be lucrative,” says Alex Taggart, the founder of Isle Of, an artist management and music consultancy who worked for several years in China. “With no foreign artists able to come into China, the domestic music industry massively raised its game.”

He adds: “Before Covid, it was much easier to be a random western artist in China doing well.”

Now, international acts have to work increasingly hard to win over Chinese fans. Perhaps no act has worked harder than Westlife. The Irish boyband first performed in China more than 20 years ago and have been steadily building up a following since.

“We’ve performed in China more than 20 times and it’s become one of the most special relationships we have anywhere in the world. The scale of the support still amazes us,” says Shane Filan, one of the band’s members.

Kian Egan, another band member, says Chinese fans “know every lyric, every album track, every harmony, sometimes better than we do ourselves”.

In 2023, the band performed a song entirely in Mandarin at a show in Wuhan, a cover of The Ordinary Road by the Mandopop star Pu Shu. For a country with a strong sense of national pride, few things are likely to impress Chinese fans more than learning the language. This year, the foursome performed at China’s flagship Spring Festival Gala, to an audience of more than 650 million.

Charli xcx, before she became Brat-famous, impressed Chinese fans when she collaborated with the Chinese electronic musician Howie Lee to produce a Mandarin version of her hit song Boys.

Part of the appeal of Westlife and Jessie J is their penchant for ballads, a musical style adored in China. “The thing that Chinese music listeners really care about is, one, melody over everything, and two, they really respect pure singing ability,” says Taggart. “They love somebody with pipes. That is a big part of the reason why Chinese fans love Jessie J so much.”

Cornish says part of what she enjoys about performing in China is “how much they respect and celebrate voices and technique … I really miss people just listening”.

Performing in China has its challenges. As well as navigating the language barrier, Cornish says the rules on showing tattoos on television have tightened since she first appeared on Singer – it was officially banned in 2018. She had to plan her outfits to ensure none of her tattoos were visible.

Several mid-tier British indie bands have also found unexpected success in China, including the alt-rock ensemble Sea Power, who garnered a large following in the country after they scored a popular video game.

Although the Chinese market may be harder to break into post-Covid, China is hopes to attract more international stars to help boost its flagging economy.

In 2024, Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, announced a surprise show in the tropical south Chinese island of Hainan, which sold out within minutes. The controversial rapper, who has been widely criticised in the west for racist and antisemitic comments, was not the most obvious choice to perform in China, where all performances are subject to censorship review and where the government generally discourages explicit content.

But the show reportedly generated 373m yuan (£41.2m) in tourism revenue, and other cities were soon clamouring to host their own version. West performed again in Shanghai last year.

For all West’s tirades, he has never publicly crossed Beijing’s red lines. A music industry professional who asked to remain anonymous because of professional links to China says: “It’s not necessarily about explicit lyrics. Those are allowed on Chinese platforms … it would be more of a political thing. If someone was outspoken against the Chinese government, they would struggle to build a career in China.”

Before the show in Hainan, West abruptly cancelled a scheduled performance in Taiwan. Perhaps his team had learned from Katy Perry’s mistake. The Hot N Cold singer was reportedly banned from China after she performed in Taiwan wearing the Taiwanese flag as a cape.

But, perhaps mindful of the consumer spending that Perry could generate, the Chinese authorities apparently forgave her last year when she was allowed to enter the county to perform five sold-out shows. On returning to the stage in Shanghai, Perry said the Chinese were her “best fans”.

Additional research by Yu-chen Li