Rising and rising through the dance-pop genre with a stunning frequency started by What’s Your Pleasure?, the bombastic explosion of Jessie Ware’s music has been as intense as her latest track. Free Yourself has the gift of that house-bound style Lady Gaga’s latest album, Chromatica, offered up. There is strength in that notion for Ware’s latest single. Cementing not a new sound, but a twist on an old and welcome style, Free Yourself is a piece that considers its influence and charts them well. All to the sound of new beats, naturally. Ware has a talent for continuing genre movements that haven’t been utilised well since their initial conception.
Free Yourself is a tremendous example of how those former decades of influential music can be compiled and compressed. Flashes of Robbie Williams and Elton John flow through the upbeat opening that mixes Rock DJ with the pianist stylings of mid-80s Elton. For those without tinnitus, it may sound a tad different. Free Yourself certainly changes when Ware opens with some tremendous vocals, her quality comes not just from her writing but from her performance. There is an activity present, a call to independent arms as the pause breaks “your” and “self” in such a satisfying change of pace. There are the usual walks of upbeat stylings and optimistic temptation. Ware’s rhyming structure is simple but particularly fun to engage with, it adds to the pop mentality.
Like any good track associated with pop, Free Yourself is catchy. But like any great track, there is an elevation. Ware is close to those next steps and her upcoming album will hopefully cement that stylistic choice and engage with it further. For now though, Free Yourself is a free pass to a delightful bit of music, optimistic and engaged, a positive message that flows through with an integral repetition from Ware. Whether or not it nestles into a playlist of favourites is beyond this track, it is to some degree radio fodder, but it is fun radio fodder. Engaging and beginning to redefine what a listener may expect from a typically broad pop track. But this isn’t pop, is it? Ware has managed to reinvent that with her own sense of placement in the garage house style. It is such a swift and rewarding change of pace.
Crucially though, Free Yourself is capable of removing itself from the pop genre label in portions. Ultimately this is a pop track, but to decry that as a dirty label misses the point and impact of Ware’s deconstruction of said genre. Her survival in an oversaturated genre and the reason for it is clear to see. There is unique and essential talent here that provides great strokes of Eurodance charms with the soulful elements of 70s pop tracks. Those callbacks and charms are consistently relied on in Free Yourself, a track that, if anything, showcases Ware’s vocal range. Lyrically adaptable and relatively catchy, but the real winner on this track is Ware, whose voice is the essential difference maker in allowing her to stand out against a tide of pop-oriented tracks.
