Jessie Ware is awesome. She’s super charming, fun and does live show as if she’s fully not aware that she’s actually famous. It feels like she’s always performing in front of her friends at some random sketch pub in England. Her music reminds me of good r&b songs in the early 90’s. If she married Tommy Mottola I’m sure she’d be one of the biggest things ever right now.
Having seen her tour for this album once already (in April), there were really no surprises at this show. Jessie Ware does not rely on gimmicks or dancers, she takes center stage and uses that big voice of hers to put that additional power behind each track off Devotion. In between songs, she’ll do cute banter with the crowd and even takes people’s phones and does selfies on it. It’s great. Wildest Moments is obviously her biggest hit and as expected inspired a singalong. If you like Jessie Ware or even good pop music at all, you’ll do yourself a favor and go check her out.
What you should not do is take out your phones and record a video of the entire song. So many people do this: why? I have done it before, but quickly realized how stupid it is, and stopped. However, people still insist on video recording the entire song and sometimes even most of the shows, possibly for future slideshows? How great can these music videos be?
Let’s take a look at some of these
Example 1
This guy’s video didn’t even start when the song started. Do you think he went “wooooooooo!” and then thought “shit I have to record this?” The quality is surprisingly decent, but the backing instruments are severely muted, and suffers from shakey hand syndrome. He also fails to maneuver around an arm about halfway through the video. Still, a decent effort and it wasn’t too shaky.
Example 2
Sigh. Is this a dub step version of Jessie Ware? I don’t know. Things to do when wanting to record a concert video
1) stand beside the subwoofer.
2) shoot the video in portrait mode
Maybe it was the same person who shot that Rob Ford video. Why post this on youtube?
Example 3
All the good camera work here is ruined by the crappy audio. Lesson to be learned: audio will never ever be good when recording off the phone. Is this person seven feet tall? He does some good framing work. Still, was it worth missing one of the best songs of the show by having to watch Jessie through your phones screen? Probably not.
In conclusion, while we sometimes fall to the temptation of wanting to record great moments for later, maybe it’s best to just trust our memories and live in the now. Also, go see Jessie Ware.