“It’s not impossible to bloom and grow,” sings Jessie Ware on the opener to her sixth studio album, Superbloom. “‘Cause everyone deserves their flowers.” The song, also the lead single, is called “I Could Get Used to This”, which is precisely how fans of nu-disco feel as Ware has leaned heavily into the genre for her last three LPs.
Similar to its predecessors, What’s Your Pleasure? and That! Feels Good!, Superbloom is indeed another ethereal escape to the dancefloor. However, it charts its own course as a garden-themed concept album—borrowing imagery from the seminal children’s classic The Secret Garden, perhaps with a dash of the Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors. The result is as satisfying as anything Ware has released in the last six years.
When she announced the album’s release earlier this year, Ware admitted to being “not the most by-the-book pop star” but said she loves dance music and likes to play with “dress-up, glamour, and fun”. She aimed to dig deeper with Superbloom, confessing fears of losing fans by repeating the same thing.
While the record is sonically similar to her previous two studio efforts, Superbloom stands on its own merit as a bit raunchier, if you will, with more frequent double entendres. In the process, Ware created quite possibly her gayest record yet. One need look no further than the lyrics to “Sauna” to confirm this: “If you wanna last longer / I don’t need faster, I need stronger, take it to the sauna.”
The record, and by extension the nu-disco music Ware makes, can distinguish itself from other modern-day disco by Kylie Minogue or Madonna because the singer relies on her own wisdom and storytelling rather than on pure 1970s nostalgia. In the title track, Ware even references that she’s playing with old-school influences while simultaneously infusing them with her trademark: “Delight in the afternoon / Something classic, something new.”
She accomplishes something similar on “Mr. Valentine”, a track that Donna Summer would have eaten up had it been written in her time: “Show me the magic / Dozen red roses surround me / I gotta have it / Beautiful madness, show me how you give your love.” It’s this “beautiful madness” that allows the singer to create something uniquely singular while expertly incorporating a bygone subgenre of pop music.
Different to What’s Your Pleasure? or That! Feels Good! Superbloom leans heavier into its disco references, with the production and songwriting on Ware’s latest LP more dedicated to the essence of disco music, which is essentially the promise of sex. Her previous records were pop albums made in the present with a certain zest that borrowed from the past. Superbloom is a disco record through and through.
“I’m bad, beautiful / Hold my hips, watch me move,” proclaims Ware on “Ride”, the second single. Not that she wasn’t confident on her last two albums, but the singer sounds more sure of herself and the space that she occupies on Superbloom. “Hey, I like the way you move on the dancefloor,” she beckons in a different way than when she told us, “That feels good / Do it again” in 2023. We already know she likes this feeling—now she’s telling us why we should feel that way, too, at least for the 42 minutes that encompass Superbloom.
Simply put, Jessie Ware is hornier on Superbloom than its predecessors, and that alone makes it more assertive. “I’ve been waiting, craving, needing / For something, someone to relieve me / Come on, darling, can you please me?” she asks on the final track, “Mon Amour”. What makes the song scrumptious and leaves us hungry for more is its genius mingling of “more” with the French words “mon amour”. As she declares that she knows she’s not the only one who feels this way, the purpose of this trip into Ware’s secret garden becomes clear: that everyone has their own version of forbidden fruit, and sometimes it might behoove us to throw caution to the wind and take a bite.