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Jessie Ware - Midnight


Pop ballads are almost a synonym of boring music trapped in time, and the music industry even created the euphemism "adult contemporary" to label that kind of music that plays safe with romantic lyrics and dull melodies (I'm sure that for this moment you have Michael Bublé, Bryan Adams or Mariah Carey in your mind). But once in a while, there are power pop ballads that defy expectations and nail the task of adapting the new music trends to a mature audience with full sophistication and elegance. Adele managed to do it in 2011, and Jessie Ware might be on her way to offer us something as good.

Midnight, the lead single of her new album, is unequivocally a track aimed for grown-ups. While her first two albums played with the idea of a spectacular pop voice in between minimal electro-pop music, Midnight is Jessie Ware subduing the experimentation to her talent as a singer and as a songwriter. It is a track that embraces the 90s R&B revival to maximize the emotional power of her lyrics and her voice, with just the necessary amount of the dub sounds that were the main figure in her previous work.

A dark synth that moves like the circular waves in a swimming pool at night introduces us to the suggestive mood of the track and Ware holds her powerful voice for a while before exploding with a full instrumentation in an ambiguous confession "Maybe I love you, maybe I want to". The marked drum and piano notes add strength and certitude to contrast with the elusive and mysterious synths, but it is Jessie's voice the core element of the track, displaying her range and power to make big statements with every inflection that she uses.

Is the kind of music that Christina Aguilera or Leona Lewis should be doing, because an amazing voice is worthless if it doesn't come with music able to explore new territories. Will Jessie be able to do the crossover from indie to mainstream? If not, it would be a shame, because this is the kind of tracks that should be playing in big arenas instead of weak Coldplay or Ed Sheeran songs.

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