The British singer-songwriter and podcaster, Jessie Ware returns to music after a two-year hiatus. In her 2017 album, ‘Glasshouse,’ Ware opened up about her motherhood and vulnerability. Later that year, she and her mother, Lennie, started the podcast  Table Manners, where they invite famous guests over for a home-cooked meal and talk about life and food. Now she’s back with her fourth album, ‘What’s Your Pleasure.’ The LP comes out tomorrow and it’s filled with disco and simmering synth-pop sounds. V is opening our archive to release this issue of the singer by Babyface in 2015 for the next installment of our Collector’s Club. 

JESSIE WARE Thank you very much for doing this.

BABYFACE Well I’m honored. I love your voice. 

JW That’s a massive compliment corning from you. You’ve made some of my favorite tunes. “I’m Your Baby Tonight,” that’s one of my favorite Whitney songs. And (Madonna’s] “Take A Bow,” oh, and “You’re Makin’ Me High.” That’s the song my friends and I go to after we’ve had a night out. It can either start a party or it can be at the end of a party, it’s so versatile. 

B Thank you. Toni (Braxton) came to me with that track. Bryce Wilson had done it for her. She played 11 for me and the melody just hit me. I wrote it right there on the spot. 

JW Oh, shit! What’s so clever about it Is it has that build within the verse that creeps up, and then by the chorus it does this cascading thing that kind of moves up there and it never climaxes until “you’re making me high.” It’s got such a sweet spot where it builds in the verse and it 

feels like this temptation, and then this subtle crescendo. It’s fucking brilliant.

B Thank you. You don’t sound like I thought you would. 

JW I know. It’s such a disappointment when you meet me and I have a potty mouth. Everyone thinks I look like an absolute bitch in my videos because I look quite cold and shy, and then you chat with me. Whenever anyone meets me they think I’m just somebody that works for the label, or I’m someone’s assistant, which is quite hysterical, quite fun actually. B I’m not surprised by that at all. You can’t really judge somebody by the way they sing. The only part you can judge is, when someone has a voice like yours, usually somewhere in there, there’s been some pain. When I work with an artist, mostly female artists, I try to dig deep to find out what makes them tick, what causes their pain, because that’s what I like to use. 

JW Really? How many artists have made you cry? 

B Almost all of them 

JW I’m never working with you! 

B We go to that space, but it’s nice to go 10 that space just to talk about our lives and talk about not just musically what inspires us, but what inspires us in terms of what happened personally in our lives and those things that you don’t necessarily want to talk about. 

JW It’s funny because on my first record, I did it with this amazing man, Dave Okumu. He knew how funny I am in recording studios, because we had written all the songs In his living room in South London. He tried to recreate his room in the booth, so he was like, Come on, bring some vinyl that you really love. We had Grace Jones, Sonic Youth, Prince, and everything in his living room, but the two vinyls I brought into the studio were Whitney Houston and Barbra Streisand. When in doubt I would be like, what would Whitney do? What would Barbara do? And you’ve worked with both of them.

B Yeah, those are two great ones. 

JW I’ve only got two records, and I feel very, very, new, but with this record, I made the majority of ii with these two guys called Benny Blanco and Two Inch Punch. Together they make this duo called Benzel. We fought so much. It wasn’t in a bad way. They just tested me. Essentially, we’re friends. It’s these incredibly intense situations which kind of happen in short pockets of time, but you either create beautiful relationships or disintegrate things. 

B Exactly. It can go the opposite way sometimes. You never know. Sometimes you think that you found the perfect per­son and it makes all the sense in the world. But it doesn’t. 

JW I get that. I mean there was one session, al the begin­ning of writing my second album, I managed to work with this person and I put myself under so much pressure to make it work because I worshiped this writer, and when I actually worked with him, I choked in the studio because I kind of worked myself up so much, I kind of sabotaged it. 

B You’ve got to give yourself a chance to fall first. Get it wrong a couple times. 

JW Three songs ended up on that second record that I wrote when I wasn’t even supposed to be writing. It was supposed to just be a trip to New York to escape tour­ing for a bit. The essence of this record came from when we weren’t overthinking it. And there’s such an optimism in America. I was just in the Stales last week. I love the American audience, they seem to kind of get more of the R&B soul sensibilities of the music that I do. I used to do a Bobby Caldwell cover, “What You Won’t Do for Love.” You’d have someone shout out, “Nothin’ wrong with you, girl!” like that. You wouldn’t have that with a British audience. 

B That’s amazing. I think normally we think the opposite. The European crowd is a little more passionate. But we’re not family. And you’re not family when you’re here. You know, there’s been a British invasion for years now, In America, where artists from the U.K. come here doing soul music and R&B. And the younger kids today don’t really mess with that over here. You’re appreciated by an audience here because they don’t get it new here. 

JW It’s been really wonderful. People really enjoy my ref­erences. Aaliyah, Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill, TLC. I do feel a resurgence of it. 

B Well I would definitely like to see one of your shows next time you’re here. 

JW Yeah absolutely. You’d be so welcome!