Live Review: Jessie Ware // Alexandra Palace, London, 18.11.23

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Over ten years into her career, five albums down and a variety of notches on her belt including her hit podcast Table Manners with her mother Lennie, Jessie Ware arrived at Alexandra Palace for the final UK stop of her That! Feels! Good! Live! on top form. Taking a slim break from her string of hits to thank her team and family for their support over the past few years, the singer-turned-podcaster turned singer once more acknowledged her unconventional career trajectory. Prior to the success of her previous album, What’s Your Pleasure? released at the height of the pandemic in 2020, she was very much of the opinion that her music career was coming to a close. How unbelievably wrong she was. 

Performing to over 10,000 fans from all walks of life, including but not limited to the millennials who saw her rise to fame in the early 2010s and the middle-aged women who adore her and her mother, it’s difficult to believe Ware ever struggled to sell out a venue. But perhaps it is this relative underdog status that contributes to her appeal. 

Opening with the title track to the album in which the tour supported ‘That! Feels! Good!’ it’s clear that Ware has every intention of shifting the capacious environment of Alexandra Palace into one of intimacy and stylish hedonism. 

Transforming the stage into her very own club ‘The Pearl’ and naming herself the ‘Mother’ of the imaginary establishment, Ware is clearly conscious of the more frothy elements her fans have come to expect from her. In fact, it is her status as a mother of three, edging towards 40 yet simultaneously balancing societal expectations and the craving to enjoy life, indulge herself and empower others to do the same that drew me to her in the first place. 

Bouncing between the ballads of her previous albums and the disco-oriented bops of That! Feels! Good! It became increasingly clear that Jessie Ware is simply one of those few pop artists whose vocals sound equally as flawless live as they do recorded. Yet despite her extraordinary talent, at no point does Ware indulge in the temptation to deify herself. Whilst other artists continue to paint themselves as unattainable superior entities, despite faux attempts at seeming humble, Ware seems genuinely the latter despite the campy stage design, the presence of two first-rate backup dancers and a variety of glamorous costume changes. It’s a contradiction that simply works.

Moving through the album’s entire track list and re-visiting well-loved hits such ‘Say You Love Me’ from her 2014 album Tough Love and ‘Selfish Love’ from 2017’s Glasshouse, Ware remained conscious of her long-time fans whilst excited about her newer LGBTQ+ fanbase whom she has continuously advocated for; a community that inspired much of That! Feels! Good!. The epitome of this devotion could be found in her penultimate performance: a cover of Cher’s 1998 hit ‘Believe’ in which she enigmatically moved through the crowd, beaming and singing to various audience members. 

Closing her set and simultaneously the tour of That! Feels Good! Live! with ‘Free Yourself’, the album’s lead single, Ware has never seemed so free herself, as cliche as that may seem. After receiving yet another Mercury Prize nomination this year and finding herself as a judge on the ITV reality competition series Mamma Mia! I Have a Dream, it’s crazy to think there was a time just a few years ago that Ware was preparing to call it quits.

As we all glacially exited the venue, the crowd remained electric and I found myself overhearing a pair of middle-aged women discussing the show; “Isn’t she amazing?” one said to the other. “I’m surprised by how amazing she actually was” responded the other. Amazing? Yes. Surprised? Certainly not. 

Words by Ben Carpenter


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