You can feel that pop star energy, too, in the video for “Gracie” (this time co-directed with her husband, the former professional soccer player Jordan Spence), which sees her strutting down an east London high street in a leather trench and pink gloves, throwing shapes with wild abandon as passersby look on with a touch of amusement. “We didn’t have the budget to lock off the street, so you have all these people watching, but then that’s part of the energy,” Scott says cheerily. “I love those imperfections, and that only happens when you go with the flow a bit.”
It’s an attitude that will extend to her live performances: following her seven-city, seven-date U.S. tour, she’ll be playing European festivals throughout the summer, before joining Jessie Ware—another friend and mentor—as a support act for her U.K. arena tour. She’s keeping the live act (relatively) simple—one backing musician on guitar, another doing double duty on bass and synths. “For where I’m at right now, it feels correct to just have these two parts,” she says. Neither will she be doing any elaborate new arrangements or reinventions of the songs on F.I.G.—as she points out, it is her first tour, after all. “It’s the first time I’ll be singing this album live, so I don’t want to veer too far away from it,” she says. “I just want to give people the feeling of listening to the album, but live, basically.” Plus, a cover of New Edition’s R&B classic “Can You Stand the Rain” and a mash-up of Scott’s “Bound” with Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love.” (What did I say about impeccable taste?)
Where she will be getting a little more playful, though, is in how she’s presenting it all visually. “Listen, without giving too much away… there will be a few little surprises,” she says, laughing again. There’ll be a dance break or two—“not choreography to the nth degree, but movement is really important,” she notes—as well as clothes racks on either side of the riser for some on-stage changes during the show. (A girl in process, remember?)
“I’ll still be in my base uniform: my tracksuit, my knee pads, my heel pumps, my bra,” she explains, but with a few flourishes here and there thrown in for good measure, such as the trench coat and gloves from the “Gracie” video. There are pieces from her own wardrobe in the mix, as well as designer looks she’s borrowed from brands she and the stylists she regularly works with—Taylor Thoroski and Hamish Wirgman—have grown to love, such as the offbeat London favorite Talia Byre. “You know how people say, on their wedding day, they still want to look like themselves? It’s a bit like that,” she says of her approach to performance wear.
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