Jessie Ware returned with soulful "Tough Love"

British techno-chanteuse Jessie Ware caught our attention two years ago as one of the freshest voices in alternative R&B with her elegant vocals and understated sound highlighted on her acclaimed debut album "Devotion." Since then, Ware hasn't done much on the music front, but now she is set to return with her as-yet-untitled sophomore album later this year and has shared the video for the new album's elegantly devastating first single, "Tough Love."
On Ware's earlier songs, she demonstrated a soulful style of downtempo pop. With "Tough Love," produced by BenZel, she experiments with even softer atmospheric textures and plays with the tonality in her voice. It's a warm new-age power ballad, one that's slow to build, but once it does around the three-minute mark, the song explodes into a gorgeous crescendo of buzzing synths against Ware's alluring vocals. "Tough Love" has ethereal, Kate-Bush-esque vocals, a crisp, Prince-ly beat, and enough thick, delicious bass to satisfy the fans who came to her via electronic artists like SBTRKT and Joker.
"Tough Love" is a convincing sign that Ware may actually outdo her first album with her next. Speaking about the track previously, Ware commented: "I had just finished a run of shows in the States and went to NY to work with BenZel for a couple weeks, mainly as a different focus to touring. I didn't have any expectations or pressures with what would come out of those two weeks, and think 'Tough Love' sums this up. It was me experimenting with my voice and having fun with it. It just felt right and kind of dictated the route of the next album, much like 'Devotion' did on my first album." Ware's lyrics were inspired by the trails of maintaining a long-term relationship with her fiancée while touring round the world. "It's not always easy being away from the person that I love so much, but I'm also doing something that I really, really love," she explained. "It's realistic that it's not always real easy."
Directed by BRTHR, the clip plays like a European experimental film from the early '70s. It matches that song's slow-burning aesthetic and seamlessly translates the song's gossamer vibes into visual form, which mainly means lots of shots of roses, lights and sees the London soul singer running through a sunny field and lying among purple flowers. The clip is full of ravishing golden-hour images of the back of Ware's head, film that changes from color to black-and-white, and close-up images of plant life and underwater faces. It's not an attention-grabbing video, or even a particularly notable one, but it's all arranged around the song, which still kills.

Bruno Mars turns up the heat in "Gorilla"

Bruno Mars doubles as a seedy strip-club singer in his just-released visual via Facebook for his banging tune "Gorilla" the fourth single from the 14-time Grammy nominee's platinum sophomore studio album, "Unorthodox Jukebox," which reached No.1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in March. The 28-year-old Mars has been deemed family-friendly enough to headline the upcoming Super Bowl halftime extravaganza, but the pop crooner sports a more R-rated side in the music video for the 'making sex like animals'-themed "Gorilla."

"Gorilla" an absolutely arena-sized sex jam, is a mid-tempo rock, soft rock and quiet storm song, where Mars sings about making love like animals and that he's feeling like he is high off of cocaine and drunk off of liquor and he feels great. Mars said that it was "the first song we wrote for this album and it really set the tone for the entire project and it kind of became the mascot," stating that it was the reason why there's a gorilla on the cover of the album. Musically, the song received mixed to positive reviews from music critics who praised its early 80's arena rock tendencies fused with power pop hooks, though "Gorilla" has been bashed for its explicit lyrical content.
Co-directed by the Hawaiian crooner and his longtime collaborator Cameron Buddy, the visuals follow the boundary-pushing nature of the track's lyrics, offering a raunchy video, which opens with two women speaking in Spanish while applying lipstick backstage at a gentleman's club called La Jungla. Actor Luis Guzman cameos as the club's seriously sleazy owner, and Mars and his mates serve as the house band performing the epic "Unorthodox Jukebox" cut, and practically every frame of the video drips with both sweat and sex, which, again, is probably the point.
After an introduction by Guzmán, Mars kicks things into gear and "Slumdog Millionaire" star Freida Pinto, an exotic dancer, begins pulling off some gravity-defying spins on the stripper pole with her entire sexual being. As his band bangs out some mid-tempo steamy soft-rock piano stabs, Mars pushes practically everything to the max, mugs at her intensely, singing "You and me baby making love like gorillas," as she disrobes and sparks fall from the ceiling. Then it cuts to the two of them heating up with in the backseat of a steamy car. The video ends somewhat ambiguously, with the woman setting the guitar on fire and Mars merely singing as if nothing is happening.

Jessie Ware loosen bun with "Imagine It Was Us"

After watching the great British soul-soul singer Jessie Ware's ultra-serene vibe in her "Devotion," "Sweet Talk," and "If You're Never Going To Move" videos, it's a real treat to see the 28-year-old songstress' loosen the bun and let her hair down literally and figuratively in the early '90s-tinged new clip for "Imagine It Was Us," one of two bonus songs from the just-released American edition "Gold Edition" of Ware's Mercury Prize–nominated debut album, "Devotion," eight months after the release of her debut LP in her native UK.
Ware's backstory is not particularly dramatic, but there is an aspect to it that speaks to the masses, primarily in her maintained attitude that she is quite ordinary. Ware was not someone looking for pop stardom her whole life, but, rather, took at stab at being a soccer reporter before taking jobs as a backup singer at the encouragement of her mother. Now, Ware is already a big star in her native UK, but she's still trying to crack into the charts stateside. "It's either going to work or it's not. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy playing for people willing to vogue to my music," she said. "American audiences have been so fabulous and fun, the majority of them gay—men in front beating the rails, screaming, 'Guuuurl! Lawd have mercy!'"
"Imagine It Was Us," is an evocative, clubby jam. and it channels Michael Jackson in the most danceable track under her own name that she has released yet. The track definitely upholds the standard of quality Ware established with "Devotion," but it does differentiate itself from the prince-esque energy that made that album so great. The track pulses with a familiar and current pining for the dance floor in a manner she largely avoided on "Devotion" last year.
Ware gets to play disco queen in an '80s-style vogue club in Kate Moross-directed clip, which features a possible Madonna homage, and takes Ware out of the "If You're Never Going To Move" garden and into a darkened, sexy, disco ball-topped club where the costumes range from baroque to barely-there, and also probably the same club Madonna visited in "Deeper and Deeper." Dancing to a synth-lined, thumping track, Ware shakes her groove thing in a crop top and a long, lamorous ball gown as a hoard of scantily clad club revelers undulate next to her. Ware's not quite the diva Madonna is, but she does a beyond-satisfying job of transporting us back to the "Voguing" era. It's maybe the most visually slick thing we've yet seen from Ware, and she looks like she's having fun.

Sade Showcases Live Dance In "Love Is Found"

Adding some smoothness to the sweaty summer heat, English soul/R&B band Sade issues the music video for "Love Is Found," one of four previously unreleased tracks featured on her new two-disc project, "The Ultimate Collection," which is in stores now. The clip features footage of Sade and the band on stage from their current "Soldier of Love" international tour, and it's a sleek and sexy clip shot during one of the band's live shows. After all, as choreographed silhouettes dance across a screen in the background.
The band is named after their British Nigerian lead vocalist, Sade Adu, who has been in the game for over two decades and she still keeps the quality music coming. Her unreleased new tune, "Love Is Found," is a mid-tempo electronic number with a slight air of menace about it. "Love is Found" takes its time to build as R&B songstress Sade coos over rising strings for the first minute or so. It then launches into a huge tune that revolves around snarling guitars, a thick bass line, and her vocal changes. If you were looking for a reason to pick up "The Ultimate Collection," this is it.
"Love is Found" isn't merely one of four previously unreleased cuts that made Sade's recently released album. The track also happens to be the best unreleased cut that made the compilation. Frontwoman Sade's vocals are, as always, intoxicating as she drifts above the surging sound of strings and bass, all of which erupt once the track hits its stride. And instead of going over the top with the visual accompaniment, which could have easily happened given the soundtrack-ready composition, Sade keeps its relatively simple here.
Presented in black and white, the Sophie Mueller-directed live performance video showcases Sade and her full band in action as shadow-like figures dance on the screen behind them like faceless giants, as the band tears up the stage with some help from an interpretive dance team, who keep the visual element engaging but never to the point of absurdity. Sade strikes quite the gamine pose and is dressed head to toe in black with flats, and while the fashion may have changed, she retains her aura of regality, somehow existing in a place slightly elevated from the rest of us mere mortals. Glamorous frontwoman proves she is indeed a smooth operator and even does some fancy foot-shuffling of her own at the end.