KILLER COVERS || Jessie Ware: "If You Love Me"

I make no secret of the fact that I've never been the world's biggest consumer of 90's R&B. Post-New Jack Swing I think there was an unwelcome (to me, anyway) shift toward the beat rather than the soul in the music, and as far as I was concerned we already had hip for that shit.


So needless to say I may have been aware of the shortlived group Brownstone but I'm sure as hell not well versed in their sparse discography. Nonetheless, in spite of never having heard the original I can take one  listen to this cover by Jessie Ware and BenZel and, by hearing everything these two do right, I can envision with a fair amount of certainty what Brownstone did wrong on their own version: clunky, inappropriate beats; histrionic singing in the post-Whitney style; several women trying to out-sing each other on the group chorus... someone familiar with Brownstone tell me at least two of those are correct.

PS. This isn't Jessie Ware's first stab at a classic R&B cover: the iTunes version of her recent debut Devotion features a bonus track of Bobby Caldwell's monumental 1978 hit "What You Won't Do for Love".

PPS. I have absolutely no idea where "If You Love Me" is set to appear or what it was recorded for.