“Wildest Moments”, British soul singer Jessie Ware’s best-known single, hinges on the dual realization that love - its sublime and dramatic grandeur notwithstanding - has the dangerous potential of unmasking our innermost demons: "Baby, in our wildest moments/ We could be the greatest/ We could be the worst of all." Ware returns to this duality in a more subdued manner on “Selfish Love”, the second single from her upcoming third album Glasshouse (2017).
Co-written by Ryan Tedder and produced by Cashmere Cat and Benny Blanco, the track features a slightly novel bossa nova-esque vibe and an acoustic guitar. Ware’s stylized, sultry and sophisticated vocals are front-and-center on the cool and minimalist number (in contrast to the more emotionally excessive “Midnight”), as she muses about seemingly toxic and mutually pathological relationship that she cannot free herself from: ‘Selfish love, why do I do these things?/ I break you down, just to get my way/ Selfish love, darlin' you do it too/ You tell me lies and I bend the truth’.
Ware has nearly always dealt with matters of the heart as abstractions, leaving out concrete details while presenting the shape - and trajectory - of yet another matter of the heart: 'Oh, you're acting sweet/ I know what that means/ All these games we play/ Always end the same’. She coos, whispers, and exhales throughout the song, tantalized and seduced by the very romantic dalliance she denounces.
The cinematic accompanying music video - directed by Tom Beard - presents the climactic resolution that the song lacks. No spoilers here: all I will say is that there is a romantic getaway to an Italian villa that turns sour, a dead hummingbird, a mysterious phone call and a witness.
