All good things come from Essex.

Q: What do you call an Essex girl with half a brain ?

A: Gifted!

Even besides the bad jokes I stand unashamed of my Essex roots. I may not be called Sharon, Tracy or Chardonnay. Neither am I partial to donning a pair of white stiletto heels on a rare night out at the Sugar Hut Village. And contrary to popular belief I have more than two brain cells to rub together (and I have the degree certificate to prove it.) Yet I stand absolutely firm in my stance that all the best things come from Essex. Okay, so maybe I’m fabricating my facts a little, but- I can certainly say that the next biggest thing is from Essex and her name is simply

Jessie J.

I must confess that my discovery of Jessie J happened last year while I was surfing YouTube listening to music, when instead I should have been finishing off my dissertation. I found this girl sitting in her bathroom singing about how ‘Mama knows best’ in a Prince t-shirt and multi-coloured pyjama pants and I was blown away. Literally. The voice that came out of the person trapped in the computer screen was enough to have me hooked. I couldn’t keep my discovery to myself and I found myself sharing Jessie’s wondrous voice with my fellow friends (Any distraction from our dissertation was welcomed with open arms). In awe we decided to look at other videos she had uploaded and the mouse beneath my hand clicked on one video with a title of ‘Big White Room.’

Words Fail me. Often times, its’ hard to come across a song that can mean so much to so many people. But, at that moment when my friends and I shared a dodgy set of headphones in our university computer room trying to listen to Jessie belt out ‘Big White Room’- we all knew that her lyrics had touched us but all on different levels. What ‘Big White Room’ meant to me- was completely different to what it meant to my friends but undeniably we were instantly connected to Jessie's voice and honest lyrics.

So now Jessie J is on the cusp of blowing up after putting in her ten thousand hours of writing over a hundred songs and not only for herself but the likes of Chris Brown, Britney and Miley Cyrus (Remember Party in the USA- that was Jessie J!) With a Brit award soon to be resting on her mantelpiece and the album Who You Are released later on this year- in my opinion the best thing about her besides her voice is that she hails from Essex. No longer will myself and fellow Essex natives be the brunt of dead end jokes or misleading reality TV programmes that give a dishonest image of what it means to come from and live in Essex. Soon and very soon we are going to have more accolades attached to our county and I’m sure Jessie J is going to have a lot to do with it. Lets just hope that what Elvis did for Graceland and MJ did for Little Gary, Indiana- Jessie J can do for Essex. Because let’s face it, after watching The Only Way is Essex, we’re in need of redemption.

I came. I saw. I blog.

Ruthie x

PS: Please share with your friends via email/ twitter/ Facebook and let’s help Jessie J’s album get to number 1 when it’s released. Thanks : )