Jessie Ware on music, motherhood and making a difference: “I dip my toe into the pop star world, but I can also really disengage from it.”

Jessie Ware

Credit: Getty

Music


Jessie Ware on music, motherhood and making a difference: “I dip my toe into the pop star world, but I can also really disengage from it.”

By Meg Walters

6 months ago

9 min read

Stylist chats to popstar Jessie Ware about balancing her glamorous music career with her private family life and how her new campaign with OVO champions sustainability in the music industry. 


It’s rare to see Jessie Ware without a few sequins lining her dress or a couple of glamorous pearl necklaces dangling from her neck. Right now, however, the pop singer is chatting to me over Zoom as she has lunch in her garden with her husband. She’s just come back from her first Reformer pilates class and she has kept her camera off because she is, she says apologetically, “wearing cycling shorts and a very grey-looking vest and I’ve got my hair scraped back – there is no glamour today!”

Ware needn’t apologise. After all, the situation perfectly sums up the unexpected dichotomy that has come to define her – and endear her to an ever-growing fanbase. Ware straddles her two worlds – glamour and unfaltering realism – with perfect ease. She is simultaneously your favourite pop-disco diva and your funniest friend. In fact, when I saw her perform in front of an adoring crowd of about 10,000 fans at Alexandra Palace last November, she took a break in between performing her sultry, stylish songs to give a giddy shout-out to the mums from her school run whom she had invited to the show.

Jessie Ware

Credit: Getty

Ware’s current diva status comes after a rapid and somewhat unexpected rise in the past few years. During the pandemic, her fourth album, What’s Your Pleasure, proved to be something of a surprise hit. Its sophisticated, disco-infused sound became the soulful soundtrack to many of our lockdowns, offering the hopeful, glimmering promise of a very chic party somewhere on the other side. Soon enough, that party became a reality as Ware opened for pop boy of the moment, Harry Styles on his 2022 tour. Last year, her fifth album, That! Feels Good!, brought the party into full swing. “You know, one of my main incentives for the last couple of albums was to kind of cement myself as a live act that people could really have fun at,” she says.

It’s no surprise then that Ware’s latest tour is a bold, theatrical celebration of disco-inspired style and music. Ware transforms each of her venues into the Pearl Club, her back-up singers and dancers are her “Pearlettes,” and she is the silken-voiced Mother of Pearl herself. “It’s all totally an alter ego,” she says. “It’s just been magic.”

It’s all totally an alter ego. It’s just been magic

Jessie Ware

Her tour included a pitstop at Glastonbury this year where she headlined the West Holt stage. Ignoring her production manager’s pleas, she made the “schlep” from the stage down to the audience to dive into the crowd during her joyous rendition of Cher’s “Believe.” “It was so fun and silly. I think everyone that was there or who has watched it can see how much it meant to me to be allowed to headline West Holt on the Saturday night. So I thought, why not celebrate with everyone and get in there. It was a real fist pump, euphoric moment,” she says. “And I think that’s what it’s all about. When I’m doing live music at the moment, it’s about having those shared experiences, whether it’s choreographing the whole audience or making them sing Cher at the top of their lungs. It’s what I live for, and I love it.”

In order to step into character as the Mother of Pearl, Ware gets glamorous. Her wardrobe is filled with 1970s-inspired draping cape-sleeves and structural maxi gowns, each one dripping in feathers, sequins and, of course, pearls. Ware’s own style, she assures me, is a little different. In addition to cycling shorts, she opts for pared down linen, simple t-shirts and the odd menswear-inspired ensemble – “I love a good bit of tailoring,” she says referencing her looks from her 2012 Devotion-era. 

Jessie Ware

Credit: Getty

“I feel so lucky that I get to play dress up,” she says. “This last album was kind of brash and camp and fun and flirty, and Ella [Lucia, Ware’s stylist] and I have so much fun together, collaborating with designers, making custom things and also celebrating new art and newer designers.”

“I’m glad that it makes other people feel like they want to dress up, too,” she adds. “I’m obsessed with the fact that everyone wears pearls at my shows now. I love it that we’ve created a bit of a community where people can feel like they can make a fabulous effort [with their style] and everyone will really celebrate that.”

In a Taylor Swift-esque phenomenon, Ware’s fans have even begun exchanging pearl bracelets in the audience. “Oh my God, it is!” she gasps when I point out the Swift connection. “I’m kind of new to the Swiftie fan club,” Ware adds chattily, recalling how she took her daughter to see Swift perform at Wembley earlier this year and didn’t get the memo about the friendship bracelets. “I was like, ‘Why has everyone got bracelets on?’ And [some fans] explained and they gave my daughter two and it was just so sweet. Her eyes lit up.”

I feel so lucky that I get to play dress up.

Jessie Ware

And here’s that dichotomy again – one moment I’m comparing Ware to Taylor Swift, and the next, she is regaling me with a tale of being a grateful mum in the crowd at the Eras Tour.

Unlike other pop stars, Ware offers her fans these kinds of intimate glimpses into her “real” life all the time with her podcast Table Manners. On the podcast, Ware and her mother, Lennie, invite guests to their homes where they cook, eat and chat about food – invariably, a good portion of each episode sees Ware and her mother cheerfully bickering about their ingredient choices or their cooking techniques.

“I think the podcast has really helped me be able to feel comfortable with myself and to feel like people know me better. That wasn’t the intention, but I do feel like people have me in their ears, and so you become their friend or their confidant in some way. And I love that.”

In 2021, she launched a second podcast, Is It Normal, which traced her third pregnancy. “That’s something I’m really proud of, because it’s a very small number of people that listen to it,” she says. Funnily enough, it seems the world of podcasting is what allows Ware to straddle her two worlds so effortlessly. “Weirdly, the more people know about me, the more they probably realise I’m actually quite ordinary, and we’re all kind of talking about the same things and having the same problems. Maybe my normalness actually is part of why people like me.” In fact, every now and then, she sees pregnant women give her “knowing looks,” recognising her not as the pearl-bedecked popstar, but as their podcast friend who is helping them through the ups and downs of their pregnancies. She jokes, “And then I go, ‘God, now they think I’m a terrible mother because my son is having an absolute meltdown in the Horniman Museum!’”

Perhaps one of the reasons that Ware is able to slip so easily between the Mother of Pearl and the Jessie who squabbles with her mum in the kitchen or opens up about her children’s’ embarrassing tantrums is that the glamour and grandeur of her current career was far from guaranteed. In fact, there was a time when Ware thought her career would go very differently.

Jessie Ware
Jessie Ware
I don’t feel like I allowed myself to enjoy motherhood

Jessie Ware

Ware’s early career saw her opening for Jack Peñate before releasing her debut album Devotion in 2012, which peaked at number 5 in the UK charts. Then came Tough Love in 2014 and Glasshouse in 2017. Ware had established herself as a soulful singer of heartfelt ballads and powerful, theatrical anthems – but her third album was met largely with only tepid interest and Ware’s career seemed to be slowing down rather than picking up pace.

“I felt like my music was slipping away. I was never scared to go and try and get another job – that wasn’t the issue,” she says. “But it felt like this thing that you’ve been celebrated in was slipping away and dying out. It was really a funny old time.”

Ware’s first child had been born two years earlier in 2016 and she found herself struggling to balance career disappointment with the challenges of early motherhood – most of us are not pop stars, but it’s a feeling that is sure to be familiar for many young mothers. 

Jessie Ware

Credit: OVO

“I was struggling with how much to invest in [my music], but also how much to invest as a new mother,” she confides. “I have regrets about that time. I tried to do it all at the most maximum level and it felt near impossible. I feel guilty. I feel sorry for my husband and my daughter – I don’t feel like I allowed myself to enjoy motherhood enough, because there was this fear of losing my job.” But Ware’s signature humour is never too far away. She adds with a laugh: “Everyone loves a fucking arc and a story, so there you go! It was perfect for journalists once What’s Your Pleasure did well!”

“It makes me appreciate my job now even more,” she adds. “I appreciate every moment, whether that’s headlining Glastonbury or doing a tiny gig in an intimate setting. I just did a really intimate gig at OVO Arena Wembley for OVO Beyond customers, which was such fun.

Ware, along with her friend presenter Clara Amfo, have recently partnered with OVO for their Beyond campaign, which, Ware says, is a “completely different type of rewards programme with loads of little thank you’s for greener behaviour including exclusive VIP music experiences and events at OVO’s venues.” She explains, “There are also rewards you can bank for later down the line – like up to 2,400 free EV miles and even free solar panels – so even if you aren’t ready to make the switch now, there’s something to help when you are.”

Jessie Ware and Clara Amfo

Credit: OVO

I feel like I am able to be a mum at the school gates 

Jessie Ware

As Ware’s influence grows, she is trying to do her part to inspire her fans to make greener choices. “We all want to be more sustainable and I think using music to encourage and reward greener choices, like they’re doing with OVO Live and Beyond, is great and really can make a difference,” she says. “As an artist, I have a platform which I can use to help encourage fans to make a difference where they can. Nobody’s perfect and we’re all finding our way, but even small things – like using your energy at off-peak times or switching off the lights when you’re not in the room, can make a big collective difference to reduce your carbon footprint.”

And so the funny little contradictions of Jessie Ware continue – there’s Jessie Ware, the Glastonbury sensation, leading thousands in a joyous rendition of Cher’s “Believe.” Then there’s Jessie Ware, the soulful acoustic singer doing tiny gigs for 80 lucky OVO customers. And, of course, at the heart of it all, there’s Jessie Ware, the mum in cycling shorts grabbing lunch in the garden with her hair scraped back. Now, it seems that Ware has finally mastered her delicate balancing act. “It’s so weird,” she says. “I feel like I am able to be a mum at the school gates and be able to let my children live a relatively normal life. I dip my toe into the pop star world and that’s quite fun, but I can also really disengage from it.”


Images: Getty, OVO

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