Jessie J received her ex-boyfriend Channing Tatum’s blessing to sneak a Magic Mike reference into her newest album.
“I played him the song to see if he’s OK with it and he was,” Jessie, 37, told The Guardian in a Saturday, November 29, profile when asked about referring to Tatum’s 2012 dance movie on her “Complicated” track.
“Complicated” is one of the songs on Jessie’s sixth studio album, Don’t Tease Me with a Good Time.
“2017 went by ’cause I wanted / 2018 to be mine and be honest,” she sings. “Met a Magic Mike, will that ever be forgotten? ‘Cause everything they write / That’s the headline and the topic.”
Jessie and Tatum, 45, dated between 2018 to 2019. (They were first linked one year after Tatum and ex-wife Jenna Dewan, who share daughter Everly, divorced.)
“It did get frustrating. It felt that everything I read about myself was about him,” the British singer recalled to The Guardian about their then-relationship, going on to reveal where they currently stand. “Oh, he’s so sweet. Oh my God, yeah! Channing is such a sweet guy.”
The “Price Tag” singer continued, “We were such good friends and had such a good time together.”
Fans have also theorized that there’s another reference to Tatum on Don’t Tease Me with a Good Time.
“Karma gonna come one day, yeah, ‘Cause I gave you my love,” she sings on “Throw It Away,” out now. “You threw it away … Don’t you dare rewrite the story / I’m the beauty, you’re the beast / You can take your — and go now / Have a good time in these streets.”
While speaking with The Guardian, she quipped that the fan theories claiming Tatum was the so-called beast on the track were “funny.”
“Yeah, I reckon there’s probably a little bit of that in there,” Jessie acknowledged. “But, it wasn’t just about him. I dated a lot of people when I was in L.A. and there were lots of men who were, like, ‘Yeah, ride on my motorbike and I’ll show you around,’ and then they just drop you off. That’s the negative of L.A.”
Jessie lived in California for a decade before relocating back to her native England last year.
“It was a really selfish, amazing life I had, but it wasn’t the kind of life I could maintain with a child and a partner,” she recalled. “When I had [my son] Sky, I thought I didn’t want to raise my son away from his immediate family. And my partner’s Danish, so we wanted to be closer to Denmark, too.”
Jessie has been dating basketball player Chanan Colman since 2021, and they welcomed their son two years later.
“I just felt the new chapter was going to be here,” Jessie told the newspaper of leaving Los Angeles in 2024. “It was the day that [President Donald] Trump got elected that I left. It was the day we planned to leave, so it felt aligned. So many of my friends are struggling mentally with America right now. … It’s the polar opposite of what I believe in, which is equality and love and everybody having the freedom to enjoy the life they want to.”
Tatum, for his part, is now in a relationship with model Inka Williams.
Don’t Tease Me with a Good Time is out now.
