INTERVIEW: Jessie Ware releases 'What's Your Pleasure? – The Platinum Pleasure Edition'
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Last year, the UK’s Jessie Ware released her fourth studio album What’s Your Pleasure? a glorious collection of disco-synth-electro-pop infused tracks which attracted huge critical acclaim and commercial success. The album was not only Ware’s highest charting album on the UK charts, peaking at number 3 but also earned her two BRIT Award nominations - British Album of the Year and British Solo Female Solo Artist.
Today Ware releases What’s Your Pleasure? - The Platinum Pleasure Edition a deluxe edition of the album featuring seven new tracks and a remix of her 2019 single ‘Adore You’. “I had such an amazing response to the What’s Your Pleasure? record that I didn’t want the lights to go up and the party to be over just yet!,” Ware says of the decision behind releasing the deluxe edition.
The album is still as wonderfully fresh and addictive as it was on first release, and the sonic soundscape of the new additions blend seamlessly with the original set, complementing and enhancing their brilliance. From the uproariously joyful single ‘Please’, the stunning beauty of the cinematic ballad ‘Pale Blue Light’, to the funky baseline overlaid with synth beats of ‘Impossible’, the album is an uplifting rush of pleasure from start to finish. If you are already a fan of the album you will find just as much to love on this new release, and if you are yet to discover the joys of What’s Your Pleasure? this is the place to start.
To celebrate the release of the album we recently chatted with Jessie to find out more.
Hello Jessie thank you so much for carving out part of your day to chat with us. First up, thank you for What's Your Pleasure? - The Platinum Pleasure Edition. If ever the world needed to dance, it has been now. And I just wanted to know what has been your personal joy that you carried by unleashing such a mirrorballed platform heel of an album when everyone was stuck in sweatpants in their house?
Honestly, it's been such a wild year. It's been a year nearly since that the record first came out and now we're doing the deluxe. I think it's been my fans, it's made me realise how hysterical my fans are, and how much they got it and they got it even more than I even thought they were gonna get it. It's been such an empowering, confidence boosting year for me as an artist and a woman in music. We made this record and it's really caught fire which you don't get that all the time, so I'm not taking any of it for granted.
The album is so gloriously disco and has really taken off on place like TikTok with fans making dance videos to your songs. It is really so accessible, and do you think that's the wonderful thing about disco and why it never went away? Because basically, it's dad at a wedding?
Yeah. There's something that you can't knock, and people can try and knock it but when it's been such a shitty year to try knock a bit of joy and happiness would be really fucking shitty of you, right? Disco, it makes you feel something, it makes you feel you're in a different dimension, a different world. And there's a freeness and a freedom to express yourself. And I think that is what's really fun about it.
One reason I want to keep saying ‘thank you’ for release this deluxe edition is because we get probably the best slow dance song in a very long time with 'Pale Blue Light'. Talk me through this one this one because there's gonna be a lot of teenagers making out to that song. A lot!
Oh, wow. I'm so thrilled that you like it. For me, it felt quite filmic, cinematic. It felt like it was that prom movie moment, the spotlight’s on, there's been the jeopardy but there's this passion and need. It definitely was me referencing Prince. It was probably the most classically written song for the record, to be honest. Where we sat down, we had guitar, we just kind of wanted to write something a bit more straight. We've been doing things like 'Ooh La La', and 'What's Your Pleasure?' and we just kind of wanted to sit and take a breather. I'm really proud of the song and I hoped people like it and I’m really touched that you like it. It will be an amazing moment live too, it's tears, it's passion, it's shouting, it's all of it and I want it all. That's how I work the best when I have a story in my mind, I have a visual. And I can imagine what the time and place that that's going to be played.
Aside from your career as an incredible pop star, you've now got an amazingly wonderfully hilarious, delicious podcast with your mum, and a recipe book. Are these multiple strings to your bow a way to keep you inspired and just bring on the joy from a personal perspective?Yeah, you know the podcast was a wonderful accidental tool to show my personality in full, week in week out, whilst also being able to flex the kind of skill that I've not been able to do, which was interviewing, talking to people. I was so tired of speaking about myself, talking about my music, talking about my work, it just felt so kind of self involved. And so the podcast with my mum, where it literally was dinner with somebody interesting, it was a wonderful release. And it was a really affirming way to feel like well, people were listening and they are enjoying it, therefore I'm not annoying them too much. And this is the real me. And therefore maybe I need to let a little bit more of my personality and lightness and joy come out in my music too. And so it was very much a wonderful kind of resetting tool for me.
There's a line on 'Impossible' where you open with: 'Something tells me you're making quite the scene'. And I was like, that's got to be one of the most quintessential British openers I have ever heard!
That one is the nearest I've got to commenting on the role of a woman in music. You know, it's ‘you're making quite a scene, it's quite obscene’. The word hysteria comes to mind, because that word is associated with women, you can't just have an opinion and stuff like that. So it’s my… maybe settling some scores and putting things to bed.
Lastly, before I leave you, what is on the horizon for you?
Well, album is out. My book is out. I'm having a baby in five weeks. And I go on tour at the end of the year. I'm going to have like a few months off to just be mum. And then the baby will just come everywhere with me. And then next year, hopefully lots of touring and festivals. I'm going to finish my record as well, I have the new record that I'm in the process of making. I’ll probably release the record before the festivals. Lots is going on. And the podcast goes on!
What's Your Pleasure? – The Platinum Pleasure Edition is out now. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Jessie Ware you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
December 1st – Birmingham O2 Academy
December 2nd – Manchester O2 Victoria Warehouse
December 3rd – Southampton O2 Guildhall
December 5th – Newcastle O2 Academy
December 7th – Leeds O2 Academy
December 9th – Glasgow O2 Academy
December 11th – Bristol Marble Factory
December 12th – London O2 Academy Brixton
December 13th – London O2 Academy Brixton
Tickets on sale here
