Music Review: Tough Love

There’s a perfect song for every moment. When you want your girlfriend back, you hold a boom box over your head and play Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” When you’re home alone in a button down shirt and white tube socks, you slide across the living room floor to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll.” And when you’re standing on the back of a pickup truck driving through a tunnel, you play David Bowie’s “Hero.” In an attempt to make music for these moments, some artists stand out more than others, and Jessie Ware is one of them.

The UK artist first made her debut in 2012 with Devotion. As a young girl watching “Top of the Pops,” Ware never imagined she would rise to fame. Her soulful delivery on electronic tracks, however, has propelled her career from backup vocalist to international sensation. Here we are two years later, and Jessie Ware is back with an even better album than before.

Tough Love has something for every listener. Now a more confident artist, Jessie Ware experiments with her lyrics, vocals and production. Her tracks take you through the ups and downs of relationships, offering solace for any broken-hearted music junkies. She turns sadness into empowerment with “Want Your Feeling” and “Tough Love”—two energizing tracks that belong on hit stations. This time around, Ware works with a number of different names. In “Pieces,” a heartfelt, string-filled song about giving your all to someone and having to moving on, she works with Emilie Hayne, a Lana del Rey and Eminem producer.

As an R&B fan, I didn’t expect to find songs that I would end up playing over and over (and over) again. To my surprise though, “Kind of…Sometimes…Maybe,” a collaboration with the incredibly talented Miguel, has made it onto my top 25 most played. In the song, Ware struggles with the idea of getting back together with a former flame. The track’s dark and sometimes eerie undertone communicates the confusion often endured by lovers in passionate relationships. On the other hand, “All on You,” a personal favorite of mine, takes listeners back to 90’s Mariah Carey with its feel-good snares. Jessie Ware manages to be both retro and contemporary at the same time.

In “Say You Love Me,” co-written by Ed Sheeran, Jessie Ware admits her fear of falling in love with someone who won’t match her effort. Isn’t that something that all us romantics can relate to? The track is acoustic, giving room for her emotional vocal delivery. Without overdoing the trills and runs she most certainly can do, Ware builds us up with her falsetto and carries us back down with her hook. At one point, Ware brings in a chorus that takes the song from ballad nearly to gospel. It’s such a beautiful thing to hear. I have always been a fan of female powerhouse vocalists, and Jessie Ware is a refreshing new name to the mix. She is vulnerable, ambitious and innovative. With Tough Love, Ware proves how far she’s come and how much further she plans to go.