This seasoned popstar knows what she’s doing when it comes to delivering a night out for the ages. This deeply uplifting evening came replete with flawless disco sing-alongs, nut-tight choreography and even a stellar Cher cover to boot.
Jessie Ware doesn’t do halves. She tackles the pulsating dance number What’s Your Pleasure? sparkling in a pearl-studded bralette – her fourth outfit of the night and by no means her last – and clutches a microphone attached to a thick white whip instead of a stand, which she duly twirls around her head and lashes theatrically towards her backing dancers. It’s a rendition that leans into the kinky side of the title track of Ware’s career-defining lockdown album, which had many critics grasping for the appropriate superlative to convey its rush of steamy, exquisitely produced disco that caught the zeitgeist in a society clamouring for a return to the dance floor. What’s more, Ware has already told us her mother Lennie is in attendance tonight (beloved by the crowd as co-host of their hit mother-daughter podcast Table Manners), plus Auntie Monica. When the two male dancers, wearing tight shirts and even tighter unflinching smiles, gracefully bend over and present their backsides to the audience, a line seems to have been crossed. “Sorry, Monica!” Ware manages to blurt out between lyrics, doling out a pair of hearty spankings all the same. The choreography has been rehearsed for a reason, after all.
It’s a moment of hilarity that nicely sums up what makes a Jessie Ware gig such a unique hoot. Five albums and 13 years into her career, the 39-year-old is entering pop veteran territory, and there’s a wizened confidence in the way she effortlessly endears herself with organic chat between songs, speaking in the loving tone of an old friend. It seems over the years Ware has learned to drop her guard and never take herself too seriously. “When I first played in Manchester I just stood still, sang my songs and that was it,” she admits to us at one point, in between chatting to a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary and gushing about how she met Marcus Rashford yesterday (“I invited him to come but I think it might not be his kind of thing”). That said, Ware knows when to assume a more formidable posture when required of her, like when whipping her bandmates on What’s Your Pleasure? or on the opening number That! Feels Good! during which, after introducing monikers for her bandmates – Steady Eddy on bass, Sweet Pea on backing vocals, The Oyster for one unlucky dancer – she pronounces herself as Mother, arms spread wide and head held high. Make no mistake, for tonight this venue is not just Victoria Warehouse, but Victoria Ware-house.
Mother may have been a reference to the recent Gen Z trend of giddily calling any vaguely authoritative female figure on a stage “mother”, but it was literally true, too. Ware is at an age at which women in the music industry are encouraged to gradually recede from the limelight and into the afterlife of Radio 2 to make way for the next cohort of trendy twenty-somethings. A mother of three isn’t supposed to bring in the numbers Ware is pulling today, let alone with unequivocally erotic songs about sexual empowerment and dancing. Instead, 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? turned Ware from a faltering M.O.R. popstar into a household name, and it’s that album which forms the bulk of the set list tonight, along with if-it-ain’t-broke follow-up record That! Feels Good!. In fact, the only pre-2020 song that gets more than an allusion is Say You Love Me, a poignant remnant of a past era for Ware, delivered with a sombre piano accompaniment to contrast the bombast elsewhere in the show. It’s a touching singalong with a fine vocal performance, but even this ballad has been bettered in recent years, namely by the gorgeous Remember Where You Are, which soon follows and provides necessary respite from all the feather boas and glitter. A song title to live by, Remember Where You Are’s message of bittersweet hope hits even harder in the flesh, a relatively calmed group of swaying backing vocalists delivering the chilling line “the heart of the city is on fire” as Ware begs for someone, anyone, to “take me home”. It’s her most profound song and perhaps greatest artistic achievement.
That song formed the end of a run of Ware’s slowest, sweetest ballads, which were all lumped together for an obvious reason: to leave a second half bursting with non-stop dance crowd-pleasers. The uber camp showstoppers soon piled up: Ooh La La’s bass line alone could have torn the roof off; Begin Again built spectacularly towards a thrillingly belted high note; Bananarama-referencing Mirage (Don’t Stop) was hypnotic and impulsive, the only flaw being that it had to come to an end. When the source material gave an opportunity for some fun onstage amateur dramatics, Ware went all in. Shake the Bottle, for instance, features plenty of coy interactions with the two backing dancers, who hysterically played the roles of Ware’s former love exploits, making absolutely sure the audience missed none of the many cheeky double entendres sprinkled throughout the lyrics. She hardly stopped moving during up-tempo dance banger Freak Me Now, her drummer delivering a thrilling performance at a DJ station at the front of the stage. Beautiful People provided a ready-made slice of crowd choreography in the lines “Stand up / Turn around / Take a bow / Because you look so good right now”. It could have been corny had the music itself been lazy, but instead we got a cracking bass riff, punchy horns and an all-out vocal performance from Ware, gleeful architect of the ensuing chaos. We were all, as Ware insisted, “beautiful people” and as the few thousand punters crammed into Victoria Warehouse spun around and jumped up and down to the beat, it was impossible not to agree.
Every song was a winner, but Ware had one more surprise up her sleeve. After a suspiciously long costume change, we might not have figured out the source of Ware’s disembodied vocals had one of the dancers not gestured to the back of the room. A disbelieving cheer rippled through the crowd as it transpired that Ware was perched in a corner of the mezzanine floor at the back of the room, now wearing a riot of pink that dazzled under the spotlight. What’s more, she was getting stuck into the verse of Cher’s cheese-smothered classic Believe, which the audience duly belted along to. She proceeded to weave through the standing audience Jesus-like, blowing kisses and holding hands of devotees all whilst belting out the chorus in full voice like the rest of us.
She was ushered back onto stage just in time for a final rendition of Free Yourself, a riotous ode to self-acceptance and perhaps Ware’s quintessential song. The track was one of the highlights of the lavish opening sequence to last year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool and in Manchester it was no less extravagant, the sashaying dancers visibly perspiring under many layers of sequins. It was silly and unedifying but in an honest, unapologetic way; Ware understood that you don’t need a reason to have a good time – just wanting to dance is enough. The extended cut of the track was glorious, Ware never losing an ounce of enthusiasm even as the final chorus looped back into another repeat. All around me, the ecstatic crowd lapped up every last note.
The sad truth was that Ware had to leave the stage eventually, prompting boos which briefly switched her into stern mother mode (“we don’t boo in this house!”). When she left the stage victoriously to the strains of Candi Staton’s Young Hearts Run Free the crowd simply kept dancing, oblivious to the stewards who were rapidly trying to cordon off sections of the standing area for cleaning. I would soon regret not joining in. Instead I watched and took a moment to appreciate how far I’ve come and how special this moment was; or, as Ware would put it, remember where I am. Jessie Ware had been the figurehead for tonight’s fabulous celebration of life, but as I watched punters twirl one another around and laugh uncontrollably, it seemed clear that this gig belonged to all of us.