Jessie Ware: Making music that is to be enjoyed – ‘have a dance, have a snog and put my music on to soundtrack it’

Just a few short years ago, following the release of her third album, Glasshouse, Jessie Ware was feeling broken and bruised by the music industry. Truth be told, she was about ready to give up on it. The Londoner had spent the early part of her career best known as a collaborator with the likes of enigmatic producer SBTRKT, Disclosure and electro-soul artist Sampha, before striking out on her own with 2012′s Mercury Prize-nominated, Devotion. Despite her burgeoning success during that period, however, she was “quite a misery guts”, as she put it in a recent interview.

“If I said ‘misery guts’, I meant that I was terrified,” she clarifies, running a hand through her long hair. “I had quite a lot of critical acclaim really early on and I felt like I didn’t deserve to be there and I hadn’t worked hard enough to be there yet. I felt like I needed to pay my dues a bit. And then, the ‘misery’ – I think my music suggested that I wasn’t as maybe fun as I am.” She stops, pulling a facetious frown. “Not that I’m like, laugh-a-minute. I’m making out that I’m like, the best fun ever,” she smiles, rolling her eyes. “But, I think, the music was quite melancholic and I don’t think it painted the full picture of me and my personality.”

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Ware admits that she was “hiding behind this mystique of being a kind of ‘alternative/r&b/electronic’ artist,” as she puts it. “And don’t get me wrong, I was very happy to be placed in that world and I was loving the music that I was making – I just wasn’t very confident in myself.” She shrugs. “And I think a lot of the time, that was mistaken for me looking a bit miserable but, really, it was just complete fear.”

Ware has spoken previously about struggling with the creative process for Glasshouse, as well as its aftermath, which included a difficult US tour in 2018 where she had to leave her baby daughter at home. Although the resultant album was laden with soul-baring, beautiful songs, neither Glasshouse nor its predecessor Tough Love had performed as well as her Mercury Prize-nominated debut and the pressure was significant.

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Everything changed with 2020′s What’s Your Pleasure? That record instilled the Londoner with a newfound self-assurance and positivity that has continued into her joyous, decisive new record. That! Feels Good!, which – exclamation marks and all – is the epitome of the “does exactly what it says on the tin” trope. She has become “so much more of the artist that I want to be,” she says with a wry nod. “I just had to take ten years to get there.”

Ware managed to turn things around not via a musical epiphany but thanks to the success of the podcast that she co-hosts with her mum, Lennie. Table Manners sees the mother-and-daughter duo invite celebrities around, cook them a delicious dinner and casually shoot the breeze about various topics – “food, family and everything in-between”, as they put it themselves. It has proven enormously successful since its launch in 2017.

“It wasn’t really meant to do that well. It was just about trying my hand at something new,” she explains. “But, it gave me confidence that people seemed to quite like me, warts and all. They were enjoying me being quite rude to my mother, to be honest. Or gossiping, or laughing, or getting things wrong. And I think my podcast audience is quite different to my music audience but they sort of started to cross over. And that was a lovely feeling for me.”

The podcast prised open a new world of possibilities for Ware, she says, which filtered down into the songs that she was writing.

“Without being smug, the new album is a reaction to just really enjoying myself and feeling very appreciative of the space that I’ve built for myself and that people have granted me to create – with the music, with the podcast, with being able to write, with filling in for Jo Whiley on Radio 2,” she says. “I’m allowed to do all of these things and I don’t take that for granted. So, That! Feels! Good! is a bit ‘say what you see’ – everything’s feeling pretty bloody great and I’m enjoying myself. And I feel grateful but also proud of myself that I am where I am; that I’m making music that is to be enjoyed and not necessarily studied and digested. It’s like, just go and have a dance, have a snog and put my music on to soundtrack it. I want you to be propelled into this pleasurable, happy, free place.”

Ware has never shied away from writing personal, vulnerable lyrics in the past, best heard on songs like Night Light and Sam, written for her husband (they have been together since they were 17). This time, she wasn’t overly concerned about getting deep, although argues that there are “moments of earnestness” on the new album such Hello Love, which she says is “maybe like old Jessie Ware stuff, with kind of a new flavour”.

“I think I’d done a lot of writing and soul-searching and feeling like that’s the way I had to present myself to people – by writing autobiographically,” she adds, nodding. “But, actually, that felt really limiting for me because I was struggling quite a lot [during] Glasshouse and I tried to write about that. Then, you think you have to tour that and you have to sing it and it’s just a constant reminder. I prefer to be in a happier place. So, I think there was a freedom, in the sense that I kind of relinquished this thing of feeling that it needed to be autobiographical and it needed to tell a really important story.”

Working with well-known producers James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Gorillaz, Pet Shop Boys, Florence + the Machine) and Stuart Price (Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Dua Lipa) also instilled Ware with a sense of tenacity. Ford, she says, has “zero ego but just such talent and musicality – and brilliant references” and that he enjoyed the fun aspect of their collaboration. Price, on the other hand, is “a brilliant slave-driver – my favourite kind,” she jokes. “He doesn’t settle. And we had such deep-and-meaningfuls. We were really getting to know each other like new friends and new working companions and I so enjoyed his company and the conversations that we had. He’s incredibly sensitive and thoughtful and then he’s also a taskmaster. I think I was ready for that kind of experience and I wasn’t intimidated by it.”

Last year, Ware supported Harry Styles on several dates of his US tour and she unabashedly admits that the experience gave her a taste for big arena shows.

“I feel I should be happy with my lot and what I’ve got but I am ambitious,” she shrugs. “And I want my music to get to more people. And when it gets to more people, you play bigger venues. Now, yes, of course there’s the beauty of a very intimate show but also I’d love to try my hand at the big shows because I’m proud that my shows translated into the arena [on the Harry Styles tour] and it still worked brilliantly. And I just wonder what would happen if I had the chance to do bigger shows? What kind of performance could we put on for that crowd?” She shrugs.

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In the past, Ware has arguably been a victim of her own mythology. Even now, I tell her, there are comments left under YouTube videos like, “She’s so underrated and yet, her music and emotion is not for mainstream people”. She laughs, covering her eyes, but there is no fear that such a label will hold her back.

“That’s carried throughout my career,” she agrees. “I have these people who champion me and feel it’s so unjust that I’m not mainstream. It’s weird because within the podcast world, I’m fully mainstream. We’re like the Ed Sheerans of the bloody podcast world – it’s great, I love it!” She catches herself, shaking her head. “That’s quite a statement but you know what I mean: people know the podcast if they listen to podcasts. Would my life change lots if I suddenly became mainstream? I get a bit scared about that. I have three children who I want to remain very private and not just be ‘children of me’, because that’s how weird the world is. People are very sweet and my fans are very sweet and they get frustrated that I’m not more popular. But then I’m also their little secret, and that’s nice for them, too.”

The most important thing right now, she says, is that she is happy with where she is at this moment in time – about to put a thrilling new album, possibly her best yet, out into the world.

“I’m really happy,” she says, grinning as she stifles a yawn. “I’m tired, I’m slightly stressed – but that’s just putting a record out. But, I’m happy. And I feel so wonderfully appreciative of the fact that this is my fifth record and I’m meeting new people and people are interested in it and applauding it.” She leans back, sighing contentedly. “Yeah. It’s an amazing feeling.”

That! Feels Good! is out now and Jessie Ware plays All Together Now in August. Alltogethernow.ie