MORE! JESSIE WARE IN SUPERBLOOM SAYS BRING ME JOY AND WHATEVER ELSE YOU GOT
- 4 hours ago
- 7 min read
CALLING HER NEW ALBUM Superbloom does suggest a full flowering, a peak season even, of Jessie Ware, a pop star for the full range of life’s moves, you might say, and for the full range of life’s demographics, you might add. From people who knew what Studio 54 was and those who grew up hearing about their city’s attempts at mimicking it, to those who just want you to be quiet while they sing along with her and others who hear their lives in her lyrics about choices, regrets, desires, and when all three collide.
Ware, whose debut was in 2012 and whose career has been neatly if not necessarily entirely accurately divided into two parts of three albums, has called Superbloom the “crescendo” of the dance-heavy series that began with 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure and continued/built further with 2023’s superb That! Feels Good. It is also grounded in a life being led like most 40-somethings with a bit going on.
As Superbloom lands today – and you’ll find a review of it here on Tuesday – Ware has agreed to engage in The Reverse Kondo, a chance to ignore the call to ditch extras from your life and instead ponder what would add joy, what would you bring into your life if you had your druthers and five categories, four chosen by me and one by her.
A PLACE
I’m quite spoiled that I get to travel around the world and I love that, and my kids love travelling but the most special place for me I think, and I could do with more of it, is this Greek island, Skopelos, where I’ve been going since I was six. I do go every summer and I would just like longer and more. As soon as you get on that boat …it’s magic and I breathe a sigh of relief. My kids love it and for them it’s part of their tapestry and make up. I included my favourite beach on the record, the waves, and I could just drink that place up I love it so, so much.
I think it’s familiarity and it’s this level of relaxation where …. I’m quite obsessive and a control freak. If I’m in a new place I need to know that I’m going to hit the spots that I must hit … I can be quite manic with it and something about Skopelos I stopped all that because I know exactly where I am going to go for my first meal: there’s no pressure, I just feel this sense of pure relaxation which I find really hard to do. For me it’s like old family and friends: everyone knows me, the butcher knows me, I know the post office guy. It’s just a bit a very beautiful place that never changes and I can be myself.
When pulling together an album, especially when you are not just the artist, not just the writer or producer but have the overall supervisory role, the final say, that level of obsession, the fastidiousness that might be called being a control freak, is important. It’s maybe not great in other parts of life. Can she let go of that in other aspects of her life or is it only on Skopelos?
I find it very hard to relax. Weirdly I can sleep really well, so that makes no sense, you know what I mean? My husband who can relax anywhere, his sleep is so much worse than me. I think with work I thrive under pressure and its addictive. It’s quite dangerous as well and I can feel myself quite wound up at the moment because I’m working, working, working.
But I am fulfilled in a way because I’m thrilled that I’m getting to work and also I want to push this record to as many people as possible, so I’m willing to do work. But it does feel like I’m wound up, like a lot and I feel slightly manic a lot of the time.
A SONG
Imagine if I said my own one! It’s probably really obvious, but I think it would definitely be in my Desert Island [Disc selection], I can listen to it on repeat - it’s Bibo no Aozora by Ryuichi Sakamoto. I’m a bit of a Philistine actually and it was Dev Hynes [who trades under the name Blood Orange] who introduced me to this piece of music because an R&B star had sampled it. It’s that one from the film Babel and I can listen to that on repeat and never be bored of it. I think it’s the most perfect piece of music.
I think it’s emotive and it’s melancholic, where you think it’s melancholic and it paints a picture so perfectly, but it goes on a journey where there are different interpretations of it so therefore it becomes slightly more joyful. I love that it gives you all of that in one and it’s so gentle and considered, and it treads so lightly but every choice is so stunning. I think it’s a perfect piece of music.
Melancholic is, in theory, not what happens with her songs which are ostensibly dance-focus, upbeat. Particularly the past couple of albums which have been a revitalisation of disco and quite forceful in their surface positivity. But beneath them has been a strain of pain and anger and sadness – always. Now, on the new album those contrasting emotions to the dance seem to have gone.
It’s funny because I have kind of made this career of being quite down and melancholic and “mysterious”, except I wasn’t mysterious and everyone found that out when I made Glasshouse [in 2017]. But I think this is positive and I think there’s a fine line, and I never thought I could do positive music because I thought I sounded quite naff.
But the music that I’m filling up my kitchen and my house with is soul music, whether it’s Smokey Robinson or Al Green or even Pale Jay. That’s what I want to listen to. And The Flamingos. I wanted to enjoy that and kind of bottle it up for my own music, but that along with the harder, kind of more feisty moments so it didn’t become too saccharine – because that’s not real life – with having a ballad on there that is very raw-ly honest. I kind of felt I could do that.
But yeah, What’s Your Pleasure? was quite a blue album, a questioning album: I was searching. That! Feels Good felt quite full and Technicolor. This one I feel is a warmth, it’s generous and it is full of love.
A PERSON
I think I’d probably quite like to redo things with my dad. I’d like to redo that relationship and improve that, and I think that would be important. But I also think my grandma was so amazing. She did live till she was 93, so to be fair she did live a life. But greedily, I’d just love for my children to have met her. I would have loved to have brought her back because she was so fabulous.
What would she like to redo in her relationship with her father?
My parents split up and I didn’t speak to him for a few years. We are on good terms, we are, but I watched Sentimental Value recently too and I think it brought up things. It’s learning about forgiveness and holding onto things. Parents are getting older: I see my mum and she’s 74. This was something that was whirling around with me with this record on songs like No Consequences and 16 Summers, this idea of we don’t know how long we’ve got with our loved ones and time getting away from us. But that’s just life, isn’t it?
The ideas in the album and for that matter in Sentimental Value, sound good and, in theory, it’s a yes to rebuild or re-establish relationships. But sometimes maybe it is appropriate to say I have limited time left and I’m not going to spend that time rebuilding this relationship.
Yeah, totally. Sentimental Values is a very interesting way of provoking a conversation though, isn’t it? And it is so interesting to see how many people have complications in the family dynamic.
A PIECE OF OTHER ART
I think somebody that I will always be interested by is Tracey Emin. I’ve seen her work at Tate Modern and it spans her whole career and I just think she is remarkable. And her choice of words, she is so powerful and yet so completely true to herself. And there is a vulnerability there and an honesty, and a fragility but strength. Total strength. And I think she’s just so fascinating. So I think I’d probably just want more and more of Tracey Emin.
While not claiming to know her work that well, it strikes me that Emin’s early shock work is not half as interesting now as the more complex, fuller person that she is and became. In a not dissimilar way to Ware.
I think that she is somebody that has always been truthful to herself and I think that she has never compromised. I think I have compromised, I have sometimes compromised, and I think that she presents pain and things that weren’t being talked about. Maybe they are being talked about now, but she is a real pioneer and a brave woman. I’m always quite in awe of her and inspired and moved by her. That’s what I love.
Where does Ware compromise now? Does she compromise at all?
I struggle with compromise, I have to say. I definitely am less compromising. However, if my management, who I think are incredibly fair people, have a word with me - I can be quite pigheaded I think - it’s usually when they’ve been like, “hang on a minute” and I’ll happily fix things. But usually it’s my very sane angel on my shoulder, or my husband. I can listen to [the sane angel] and I think I am quite good at taking stock and taking a beat. But I’m quite impulsive.
A CATEGORY OF HER CHOICE
I’d have more love, more sex, more kissing, more romance, more of my children. I’d have more of that. More connection. Or maybe I’d say more conversation, I don’t know. Or curiosity. There’s a lot I’d say on that one.
All of these things are indeed connection. Does she have enough in her life?
I’m greedy and I’m always ready to connect again. I love it.
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Superbloom is out today.