I think I lost myself for a while... but I know who I am
Singer Jessie Ware tells JOE NERSSESSIAN about her need for collaboration and how being a new mum inspired her writing
If I wasn’t songwriting I was probably going to be a teacher or a social worker or a lawyer Jessie Ware, above and below
JESSIE Ware jokes: “Shall I tell my mum to shut up for the next half an hour?” as we sit down in her south London childhood home. Photographs of the singer-songwriter and her siblings cover the living room’s dresser, shelves and tables. There’s a snap of her and husband Sam Burrows on their wedding day and another of Jessie graduating. In the background an ice-cream machine noisily whirrs. Jessie adjusts her hair (the interview is being filmed) and explains the ice-cream is for food critic Jay Rayner who is joining her and her mother for their podcast, Table Manners, on which the pair invite celebrity guests round for dinner and a chat. But we’re not here to talk food. Jessie – who last year released her third record, Glasshouse – has just headlined a show at London’s Bush Hall as part of a series of fundraising gigs by non-profit organisation War Child. She was particularly keen to team up with the charity because of their work with children – a career path she envisioned for herself if the whole music thing hadn’t taken off. “I wanted to work with children and I wanted to work with families,” she says. “If I wasn’t songwriting, I was probably going to be a teacher or a social worker or a family lawyer.” A new mother herself, much of Glasshouse was inspired by pregnancy and maternal love. It also reflects on her daughter’s impact on both life and Jessie’s relationship with Sam, allowing her to write more personally.
“It was a big readjustment. I felt inspired to write about things I maybe hadn’t experienced before,” she says.
“It was a really special time for me to be able to write about her and how life was changing around me.”
Jessie is an intriguing artist. She started her musical career as a backing vocalist for school friend Jack Penate and worked with fellow south Londoner Sampha prior to her 2012 debut, Devotion. There have also been collaborations in some form with the likes of Miguel, Dev Hynes, and Benny Blanco. Her body of work rejects genre-labelling, although she admits to “dipping my toe deeper into pop recently”.
“Maybe it’s time to go the other way for a bit?” she says. “I started in this underground, left world and I enjoyed that and it was really fun.
“I don’t want to put restrictions on what I do so that’s why I’ve always had loads of different references in every album, whether it’d be a country song or an R&B slow jam or a new producer I found on Facebook and asked if we could work together. It’s just making music, that’s all I care about.”
Jessie feeds off collaboration and insists on needing other people to help her creatively.
“I just don’t trust my idea is good enough and so I need someone else to go, ‘Yeah, but what about that?’.”
It could be easy to dissect those remarks as a lack of confidence or self-identity. Yet Jessie seems to be neither.
“I know who I am – I know what I want to make, I know the sound. I think I lost myself for a while but overall I know who I am as an artist.”
Balancing her time between her daughter and promoting the album has meant little time for writing, yet she is adamant her next record won’t be autobiographical.
“I want to do a completely different thing,” she says. “It’s going to be escapism. It was a beautiful moment for me but... I’m going to take a little holiday away from that.”
She has found performing the deeply personal Glasshouse cathartic, though, and the War Child gig will set her up for her UK and Europe tour in support of the album.
In the few shows she has already played, one of the album’s songs, Sam – dedicated to her husband and co-written by Ed Sheeran – has become a special moment on stage for the 33-year-old, with fans embracing the track as a singalong moment.
“I thought it was too personal for them to like it or want it, it’s really intense and amazing.”