SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU

SUMMER/FALL, 2015

VOLUME ONE NUMBER FOUR

BILLIE HOLIDAY

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

ERIC DOLPHY
July 18-24

MARVIN GAYE
July 25-31

ABBEY LINCOLN
August 1-7

RAY CHARLES
August 8-14

SADE
August 15-21

BETTY CARTER
August 22-28

CHARLIE PARKER
August 29-September 4

MICHAEL JACKSON
September 5-11

CHAKA KHAN
September 12-18

JOHN COLTRANE
September 19-25

SARAH VAUGHAN
September 26-October 2

THELONIOUS MONK
October 3-9

Sade has said about her work: "I only make records when I feel I have something to say. I'm not interested in releasing music just for the sake of selling something. Sade is not a brand.”

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Sade

SADE
British singer
by the editors of Encyclopedia Britannica

Also known as

Helen Folasade Adu

Born: January 16, 1959

Ibadan , Nigeria

Sade, (birthname Helen Folasade Adu) born January 16, 1959 in Ibadan, Nigeria), is a Nigerian-born British singer known for her sophisticated blend of soul, funk, jazz, and Afro-Cuban rhythms.

Adu, who was born to a Nigerian economics professor and an English nurse, was never addressed by people in her community by her English first name, Helen. Her parents began calling her Sade, a shortened form of her Yoruba middle name, Folasade. When she was age four, her parents separated, and she moved with her mother and younger brother to Essex, Eng. At 17 Sade began a three-year program in fashion and design at Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. After graduating, she modeled and worked as a menswear designer. Her foray into music began when she agreed to fill in temporarily as lead singer for Arriva, a funk band that had been put together by her friends. Sade later sang with another funk band, Pride, before breaking away with fellow Pride members Stuart Matthewman, Andrew Hale, and Paul Spencer Denman to form the band that would eventually bear her own name.

Sade’s smooth sound, which defied easy categorization, was exemplified by the songs “Your Love Is King” and “Smooth Operator,” both tracks from the group’s debut album Diamond Life (1984), which earned Sade and her bandmates a Grammy Award for best new artist. A second album, Promise (1985), enjoyed similar popularity and was followed by a world tour. The album featured the hit song “The Sweetest Taboo,” which stayed on the American pop charts for six months. In 1988 Sade embarked on a second world tour to coincide with the release of a third album, Stronger than Pride.

In 1992 Sade released Love Deluxe, which featured the Grammy-winning single “No Ordinary Love.” After a subsequent world tour, Sade enjoyed life away from the limelight. She became a mother, while other members of her band recorded separately as Sweetback. The band reunited to produce the critically acclaimed Lovers Rock (2000), which earned a Grammy for best pop vocal album.
In 2001 Sade embarked on a highly successful world tour, excerpts of which were featured on Lovers Live (2002).
Sade’s first album of original material in a decade found the band wrapping new instrumentation and rhythms around the smooth vocals that had defined it since the 1980s. The Grammy-winning title track of Soldier of Love (2010) incorporated martial beats and harsh guitars, and critics praised the trip-hop and reggae influences that coloured Sade’s trademark soulful melodies.

A Reluctant Return to the Spotlight

By JON PARELES

February 5, 2010

New York Times

LONDON

SADE

Photo by Sophie Muller

Dave Hogan/Getty Images

Now you see her: Sade in 1985.

Ebet Roberts 1993

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

2001

Peter Jordan/Getty Images

Above, in the 1980s with her band members, from left, Paul Denman, Andrew Hale and Stuart Matthewman.

WHEN a man from a radio station asked Sade what she had been doing in the 10 years between albums, she told him, “I’ve been in a cave, and I just rolled the boulder out of it.”

She chuckled as she recounted the exchange, with her feet tucked up on the couch at her Georgian house in the north London neighborhood of Islington.

A January rain pelted the trees outside the window of the second-story drawing room, atop a graciously curving staircase. Sade, a slender figure in black pants and a black V-neck sweater, made things cozy, feeding kindling to a crackling fire in the hearth. An interview about her new album, “Soldier of Love” (Epic) — only her sixth studio album dating back to her 1984 debut, and due for release on Tuesday — stretched into a four-hour conversation.

“I’ve got absolutely no real perception, properly, of time,” said Sade, 51, who was born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria. Her father was a Nigerian university teacher of economics; her mother was an English nurse, and raised her in rural England after the couple divorced. Sade’s speaking voice is even lower than the husky alto in her songs, the elegantly subdued ballads that have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide.

Sade’s hits, like “Smooth Operator,” “No Ordinary Love” and “The Sweetest Taboo,” were ubiquitous through the 1980s and 1990s, purring out of radios and lending ambience to countless lounges, restaurants and boutiques. Sade emerged in the music-video era (her debut album, “Diamond Life,” appeared a year after Madonna’s did), when many pop stars believe they need maximum media exposure to sustain a career. Instead Sade has hung back, letting the songs alone define her. It’s a decision that /ga/may, in the end, make her more cherished. Fans have not forgotten her; preorder made “Soldier of Love” No. 2 on the Amazon sales chart last week.

As far as the music business was concerned, Sade might as well have been in some cave after 2002, when she and her band finished touring for their 2000 album, “Lovers Rock.” She vanished from stages, magazine covers, gossip columns and other celebrity-promotion zones, though she did contribute a song to a 2005 benefit DVD, “Voices for Darfur.”

“With most artists they’re more of a big person in their public persona than they are in their private persona, and I’d say with Sade it’s almost the other way around,” said Sophie Muller, a friend she met while attending Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design who became her video director and, for “Soldier of Love,” the album-cover photographer. “Her whole self is not for public consumption.”

Ms. Muller added, “Somehow the idea of being a singer and making music has been confused with being an international personality. She’s bravely decided she doesn’t have to do the other thing. It’s not something she’s thought about, deciding, ‘Let’s make it more mysterious.’ It’s just her own way.”

Sade had scheduled a meeting with her manager after our conversation, knowing he was going to try to talk her into more promotional efforts. Perhaps she was procrastinating.

“I love writing songs,” she said. “But then, going beyond that, I find it a little bit difficult, the sort of opening myself up to everything that’s attached to it in the music business generally, the expectations and pressures that are put onto you. Some people love all of the trimmings and everything that comes with that. But I happen to not be one of those people.”

Even as she was working on “Soldier of Love,” she said, “I ventured in with a little trepidation. I wasn’t eager to get back out there and be recognized again.”

Though she said that her life has been “a rugged roller-coaster ride” for the last few years, she is “actually quite happy now.” The album is, in part, “a purging of all the things that have gone on,” she said. “There’s quite a lot of my history in the album, one way or another. It’s not all about me, but there’s bits of me in there.”

In conversation Sade has an easy laugh and a casual sense of humor. But she worries about being “too candid” with the press; she guards the privacy of the people she’s close to, past and present.

For Sade, reticence is a matter of both temperament and songwriting strategy. “That’s the trick in a way, like conjuring,” she said. “You’ve got to allow so much to go in there. But it isn’t just your own, because then it’s T.M.I.” — too much information — “and when you listen to the song you’re thinking of the person rather than your own emotions.”

“If it’s too attached to the performer,” she added, “it pushes you away, it’s a bit repulsive. Because that’s theirs — it’s not yours.”

The new album doesn’t radically change the sound of Sade, which is also the name of the band she has led since 1983 with Stuart Matthewman on guitar and saxophone, Andrew Hale on keyboards and Paul Denham on bass. “Soldier of Love” is another collection of slow, pensive songs, mostly in minor keys, often pondering lost love and uncertain journeys. The band takes pride in being proficient but not flashy, and even the album’s most elaborately multitracked and programmed arrangements come across as modest.

The first single, “Soldier of Love,” is as close as Sade gets to current R&B with its martial percussion, subterranean bass throb, sudden zaps of samples and somber strings. The rest of the album is gentler, resuming and subtly updating Sade’s understated R&B-reggae-jazz-pop fusion.

Yet in their own quiet way, many of the songs on “Soldier of Love” hold a new desolation. Sade’s music began as a British take on the suave 1970s American soul of Donny Hathaway and Curtis Mayfield, often projecting a serene reserve that reassured listeners and drew them in. Now some of that reserve has vanished. On the new album Sade’s voice shows more ache and vulnerability, moving closer than ever to the blues.

Song after song testifies to pain, loneliness and a longing for refuge.

“The ground is full of broken stones/The last leaf has fallen/I have nowhere to turn now,” Sade sings in “Bring Me Home,” a elegiac tune over a hip-hop beat. In the album’s closing song, “The Safest Place,” she offers her own affection as a sanctuary: “My heart has been a lonely warrior before,/So you can be sure.”

For the last five years Sade has had what she calls a “partner,” Ian Watts. They live together in rural Gloucestershire, England’s west country, where they are raising Sade’s 13-year-old daughter, Ila, and Mr. Watts’s 18-year-old son, Jack. Sade is considering marriage. “There’s lots of regrets about time wasted and all those mistakes in the past,” said Sade, who was divorced from the Spanish filmmaker Carlos Pliego in 1995. “But there’s something lovely about knowing that when it’s right, you really know it’s right because you’ve already been through all the wrong.”

Sade spends most of her time in the west country, only occasionally driving her Volvo into London. At her Islington house there were sheets over some furniture, and old cassette tapes on the shelves along with books of art and photography. For Sade the past decade was filled largely with domestic matters: gardening, parenthood, building a house (now nearly finished) in Gloucestershire, tending to someone terminally ill she declined to identify. “If you’ve got a sick friend, or someone you love is dying, to say, ‘See you later, I’m going into the studio’ — I just can’t do it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me enough at that moment.”

Her daughter traveled with Sade’s 2002 tour, but Sade would put her to bed before going onstage. “She never saw me sing,” Sade said. “She’s just a little tiny thing, standing there, with her mum out on the stage in front of all those people? I thought it would be too weird for her.” A few years ago, Ila asked her, “Mum, are you famous?” Sade recalled. “Now she’s completely sure and aware what the situation is.” (Ila Adu sings backup, along with Mr. Matthewman’s son, Clay, on the song “Babyfather.”)

Sade hesitated to plunge back into songwriting. “That feeling of revelation, of exposing myself emotionally,” she said, “That was maybe something that held me back, subconsciously, from going into it again. But it isn’t all about me, and it’s not only me, and the only way I can forget about it is by doing it.”

She started cautiously. The band members had scattered in the ’80s and ’90s — Mr. Matthewman in New York, Mr. Denman in Los Angeles, Mr. Hale in London — and Sade thought that having them fly in to work would signal too much of a commitment at first. Around 2005 Sade began working on songs with Juan Janes, an Argentine guitarist living in London, in her basement studio at the Islington house.

They wrote “Mum,” about atrocities in Darfur, for the benefit album, and early versions of “Babyfather” and “Long Hard Road” from the new album. With her move to Gloucestershire, that collaboration petered out, but eventually her band, her friends and her family nudged her toward music again. One factor was that Mr. Watts could now look after her daughter while she was holed up in the recording studio.

“I wasn’t pressured by the years going by, really,” Sade said. “Only through the band’s desire to make a record.” Band members had been hinting, and waiting. “I’ll always drop everything to work with her,” Mr. Matthewman said from his recording studio in New York. The members reconvened in 2008, the first time they had all been together since the tour.

Since its second album Sade has created songs in a way that is now a bygone luxury for most bands: writing together in a fully equipped studio, spontaneously, rather than bringing in finished songs to polish up. For a week or two at a time, and then for longer stretches, the band members lived at Peter Gabriel’s residential Real World Studios in Wiltshire. Mr. Matthewman recalled Sade instructing, “Don’t tell the record company.”

“I have to escape the mundane realities of everyday life in order to go there and dig down within myself,” she said, adding that at Real World, “you can’t just say, ‘Oh, I can’t work, I’ve got to go and cook a meal.’ You have no choice but to address the demons.”

When Sade talks about songwriting she turns mystical. It’s “alchemical,” an “out of body experience,” an attempt to preserve insights from the “etheric moment” between wakefulness and dreams. And with the band working together where they can record at all times, “we are able to capture that in the studio, to capture it technically in the right frame so it sounds good,” Sade said. “It is almost like a church, because you’re going to that room, you know your purpose, you know what you’re going to do in there, and you don’t have to take anything in with you that you don’t want to take in there.”

The band did not rush. “If you’re only making an album every 10 years, it better be good,” Sade said. Eventually Sony Music executives did learn that Sade was working again, and wanted the album released before Christmas of 2009. That deadline passed; Sade said she’s happier to re-emerge in a new year, and a new decade. The band finished the last mix of “Skin” — a song about a reluctant breakup, with acoustic guitars and Sade’s close-harmony vocals in the foreground as eerie electronics and percussion ping in the distance — around 5 a.m. on the day another band had booked Real World.

An album meant a cover photograph, and Sade was reluctant at first to appear on it. “Everybody around me said, ‘You’re mad,’ ” she recalled. The compromise was a photo with her back turned, gazing out over Zapotec ruins. “You’re not looking at me,” she said hopefully. “You’re surveying the journey ahead and the history as well.”

Through a quarter-century of recording, Sade has heard regularly about how her songs’ mixture of mourning and consolation have brought her fans comfort. “If it’s like a lighthouse to guide someone past the rocks, that’s a great thing,” she said.

The next round for Sade is a handful of television performances of the song “Soldier of Love,” adding the drummer Pete Lewinson as the band did on its 2002 tour. Eventually Sade intends to gear up for a tour.

“I do want to get on the stage and sing the songs,” she said. “But then I just want to disappear again.”

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misstated the date the picture was taken. The photograph featuring Sade with her band members, Paul Denman, Andrew Hale and Stuart Matthewman, was taken in the 1980s, not in 2001.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 14, 2010 An article last Sunday about the singer Sade misidentified the civilization that created the structures in the backdrop of the cover of her new album. They are Zapotec ruins, in Monte Alban, Mexico; they are not Mayan ruins.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/16/entertainment/la-et-1015-sade-20101016

Sade's whims haven't failed her yet

The singer and her band put out a hit album, their first in nine years, in February but aren't touring behind it until next year. Oh, and after nine years of vegetarianism, she's eating meat again.

October 16, 2010

By Nelson George

Special to the Los Angeles Times

Reporting from New York — — Helen Folasade Adu, a.k.a. pop soul chanteuse Sade, had been a complete vegetarian for nine years when she spotted some lambs on her farm in England.

"I hate to say this," she intones in the warm, husky voice beloved by her fans for the last 25 years, "but when I saw these lambs gamboling through the field and I started to salivate and I thought I should get to the tandoori shop quick before I pull a leg off one of the lambs. It's weird. I just thought the natural thing to do right now was to eat meat. I went through the whole veggie period thinking that was a good thing, and maybe it was for that time."

This whimsical shift in the 51-year-old singer's eating habits provides some insight into the decision making behind one of the more enduring and idiosyncratic career paths in pop music. Since their debut album, "Diamond Life" in 1984, the band Sade, which also includes guitarist-saxophonist Stuart Matthewman, keyboardist Andrew Hale, and bassist Paul Denman, has sold over 50 millions albums worldwide, won three Grammys and had a No. 1 album this year with "Soldier of Love."

Yet after a steady stream of recordings in the '80s ("Diamond Life," "Promise," "Stronger Than Pride"), they have released only three albums in the last 18 years. The gap between "Lover's Rock" and "Soldier" was nine years.

The band has retained its following, however, with particularly strong support from African-American listeners, for whom the half-Nigerian, half- English vocalist has remained both a sex symbol and an icon of elegance in a rather unrefined musical era. Dressed in black corduroy jeans and black silk blouse with her long black hair hanging loose around her shoulders, Sade more than lives up to her image during a conversation at a venerable New York hotel.
As her sudden renewed desire for meat suggests, this lady trusts, and is guided by, her impulses, and has a sense of life's priorities for which commerce is but one consideration. A prime example of her philosophy is the recently announced American tour, which begins in June and arrives at the Staples Center on Aug. 19, a good year and a half after the February release of "Soldier of Love."

When it is suggested that the more logical time to tour in support of that album would have been this summer when the album was still hot, she smiles and acknowledges "that would have been the more sensible thing to do promotion-wise. But I just wasn't ready to do that.... Sometimes I think you have to go with what you think is right as opposed to being a promotional tool for the album."
Part of the delay is practical. It will allow Sade's 13-year-old daughter Ila to travel with her mother and see her perform live in concert for the first time. But it also reflects the singer's own view of herself and how she works best creatively. "Whatever I'm doing, I'm in that moment and I'm doing it. The rest of the world's lost. If I'm cooking some food or making soup, I want it to be lovely. If not, what's the point of doing it?"

She speculates that gaps between records and tours have been one secret to the band's longevity. "Without them we probably would have been d-i-v-o-r-c-e-d a long time ago," she says, laughing. "Actually, the gaps make making a record such a special privilege."

The tour, which will kick off with a European leg in the spring, will be in large arenas, just as the band's 2001 tour was. Prior to that the band regularly played venues like the Greek Theatre, which seemed optimal settings for the sexy, minor-key intimacy of Sade's catalog.

"When you play arenas you can create whatever you want," she says of the decision. "At a theater the height of the stage and the limitations of the theater can make you feel more separate from the audience. I think we can create a feeling of being in a theater by the nature of the production and intimacy of the moment."

Back in '84 when Sade broke through with "Smooth Operator," color was a very contentious issue in pop music. It was the days of MTV when black artists' ability to penetrate the playlist was limited by both their R&B-based music and their dark skin; Sade's multi-culti looks and exotic heritage helped the band cross over in an era when many black artists could not.

Though there is a long tradition of mixed-race performers being identified as "black" in the United States, coming from England Sade was able to embrace both sides of her racial identity. In so doing she became a rare symbol of comfortable multi-culturalism on this side of the Atlantic.
"I noticed the reactions when I first came over here," she recalls of her early trips to America. "London was a really multi-racial city … It's incredible how comfortable people are with race there. But I was surprised when I came to America the first time. It was very, very rare to see black and white couples holding hands."

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/02/sade-soldier-of-love.html

Music | Reviews
Sade: Soldier of Loveb

by Stephen M. Deusner
February 18, 2010

Paste magazine

Sade Adu battles her heart on band’s sixth album

It’s been a decade since R&B mainstay Sade—the band fronted by namesake Sade Adu—dropped its last album, Lovers Rock, and before that the band took eight years off between releases. In pop time, that’s several generations. The lengthy interval hasn’t dampened the group’s appeal; it’s made it seem even more mysterious and alluring. If the band was more prolific, the music might be more mundane, and the spell would be broken.

The first single from the new album sounded completely fresh when it was released last year. Instead of the smooth, soul-jazz that informed the band’s music since Adu first purred “Your Love Is King” in 1984, “Soldier of Love” sounded simultaneously new and old: It marched to a futuristic martial beat and alluded with playful subtlety to first-gen rapper Kool Moe Dee. As Adu sang about the “wild wild west” and the “hinterland of my devotion,” the band almost sounded more like Portishead than Portishead, like they were daring you to call them sonic wallpaper.

“Soldier of Love” promised a new sound from Sade, and the album doesn’t disappoint. It’s the band’s most musically adventurous collection to date, and also its most expansive and rewarding. The familiar elements remain, including Adu’s timeless voice. They’ve plied a unique blend of jazz, world, pop and soul for more than a quarter-century, and now they add heavier beats, craftier production and a wider arsenal of sounds and styles.

These are crafty, seductive, thoughtfully constructed songs. “The Safest Place” is bookended by dramatic feedback, while “Morning Bird” opens with a simple, lovely piano theme that uses sustain pedals to create a natural reverb. “Bring Me Home” also opens softly, but is pushed along by a double-time beat that won’t let the band admire its own reflection. The upbeat “Babyfather” deploys a hooky bossa-nova beat, pointillist guitar, soft horns and what sounds like a chorus of children, the contrasting elements preventing this tale of parental devotion from weighing down in sentimentality. It’s obvious that a lot of work and forethought went into the album’s 10 tracks, but it doesn’t sound like the group spent the last decade fussing over them.

Soldier of Love is Sade’s most musically ambitious album, and it’s also its most forlorn, its most heartbroken—something tragic seems to have happened in the Sadeverse since Lovers Rock, and this album depicts a fallout and tentative recovery. An intense melancholy pervades these songs, even more so than on other Sade albums. Sade albums have never been boisterous affairs, but an unusually intense melancholy pervades these songs. This is Adu at her most luxuriantly depressive, and through it all, she battles her own emotions: “There is something that you need to know,” she sings on “Long Hard Road,” “it’s gonna be alright.”

Then again, maybe not. “In another time your tears won’t leave a trace, in another time, girl, in another place,” she sings on “In Another Time,” and it’s unclear whether that realization is a great comfort or a great tragedy: “You’ll be surprised … someday I’ll mean nothing to you.” This is an album that doesn’t even believe its own consolations, but that constant skirmish between hope and despair gives these songs battle-worn power.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/mar/13/why-sade-bigger-adele-us

Why Sade is bigger in the US than Adele

Britain may have all but forgotten her, but 80s popstar Sade is a huge star in the US since her 2010 comeback. So what's the secret of her transatlantic success?

by Sophie Heawood

@heawood

Wednesday 1 October 2014

Just as we've got used to the idea that Adele is now a massive star in America, triumphing at the Grammys for the second album running, waving at her mum and crying through her mascara that "the girl done good", it transpires there is someone bigger. A British artist whose staggering sales have pushed Adele down the ranking to merely the second biggest-selling British musician in the 2012 US money list.

What's really surprising is that the No 1 British act in America isn't Elton John or Paul McCartney or any of those obvious British behemoths abroad (although Irish band U2 did come in higher and Coldplay haven't released anything recently). Nor is it a young stealth interloper such as Mumford & Sons. It is, in fact, Sade, who many of you will have forgotten decades ago, to be reminded only when Your Love Is King and The Sweetest Taboo pop up on daytime radio, or as the soothing soundtrack to buying shoes. (Indeed I did once hear a Sade album, sometimes dismissed as elevator music, being played in a hotel lift.)

In the US, her 2010 comeback, which led to a new album, a greatest hits album and a huge tour, was a much bigger deal than it was in the UK. Perhaps it makes sense that Sade's music would find a healthy audience in America, where many original fans were unaware, given her mixed race looks and her soulful style, that she was British not American. Her grown-up brand of pop music – understated, fatalistic, with that sultry voice and her astonishing almond-shaped eye – gave her a sophisticated appeal. But not much of a public persona. Indeed, I was surprised to discover that she is now happily installed in a modest cottage in the Cotswolds with her boyfriend and teenage daughter. (Most of us didn't even know she had one.) In her home country, Sade is something of a comfortable heritage act; her lifestyle is hardly tabloid fodder.

Yet in America, she is a star. Brad Wavra, senior vice-president of touring at Live Nation, the world's biggest show promoter, declared Sade to be a "rare jewel. It feels like I'm working with Miles Davis, Elvis Presley and the Beatles all rolled into one." Rolling Stone described her new studio album, Soldier of Love, as "unimpeachably excellent" while Billboard said: "It's been 10 years since Sade released an album, but be forewarned – the giant has awoken." People magazine succinctly summed up Sade's enduring appeal as "the voice of comfort to the wounded heart". All of which led to her — or rather, the four-piece band that bears her name — earning $16.4m from combined album and ticket sales last year.

Of course, Adele had to cancel her American tour because of throat surgery, which means her takings were unexpectedly diminished, but even so the average British music fan probably wouldn't have expected to see Sade on the list anywhere at all. She comes in sixth, after Taylor Swift, U2, Kenny Chesney, Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne — a fairly broad church of country, rock, rap and pop. They are followed by Bon Jovi, Celine Dion and Jason Aldean (no, us neither), and then, at No 10, Adele.

Given that Sade is one of the least public British popstars we've ever had, does her longevity put paid to the idea that with success comes a pact with the devil of celebrity? The big promo campaigns; the paparazzi; letting the gossipmongers feed on your public romances and your private pain – none of this really sounds like her. Sade's songs do speak of pain; if not battle cries, they are cries from somebody who has battled. But they are gentle, smooth, not seemingly designed to conquer the world or fill a stadium. The music industry still talks in hallowed tones about "cracking America", something Adele has done with huge impact, but when Sade did it, she wasn't so obviously British. She didn't court the chatshow circuit with a gobby accent in the way that Adele does, so her speaking voice went largely unheard.

In fact, she has given a couple of interviews in recent years. She told Spin magazine her mother struggled a lot, having married in Nigeria "and then come home to England with two brown children and a suitcase in the early 60s". Sade's father, a lecturer, remained in Nigeria, where Sade lived until the age of 11. "I am fairly classless because it is very difficult to class someone who comes from a mixed marriage. There isn't a class structure in Nigeria, there's a tribal structure and prestige as far as money is concerned." She told Ebony magazine that her partner, Ian, "was a Royal Marine, then a fireman, then a Cambridge graduate in chemistry. I always said that if I could just find a guy who could chop wood and had a nice smile it didn't bother me if he was an aristocrat or a thug as long as he was a good guy. I've ended up with an educated thug."

It seems she quite enjoys being able to live the quiet life in England, while enjoying fame overseas – a lot like Iron Maiden, who earn millons every year touring like rock gods in South America and Asia, but are seen as a thing of the past in England. Bruce Dickinson says he likes flying a private jet to a show in Rio but then riding a bike to the pub in Chiswick.

Says Paul Simper, a journalist who worked with her extensively in the 1980s: "None of the other British solo women from Sade's time, such as Alison Moyet or Carmel, made any impact in the US at all. Sade was unique in that respect. But her Englishness was never a selling point. CBS just wanted to sign her and build her up to be somebody like Whitney, get her a professional studio band, but she resolutely stuck to her guns and stayed with the band from London she'd always had. And she still has – she's always done it on her terms. Being successful in America didn't involve any compromise or sounding any more American; her sound was always the same throughout."

And that sound has stood the test of time. Songs like Smooth Operator, No Ordinary Love and Love Is Stronger Than Pride do now feel like classics. The way she sings is the way her career has turned out – in no hurry, not about to change for anybody. Her songs are in it for the long game, and so is she.

Sade: the playlist

No Ordinary Love (1992)
The band reached their peak of opulent sound design on the aptly titled album Love Deluxe; its seven-minute epic of a lead single is as bleak as it is sensual, casting heartbreak as the greatest luxury of all.

Soldier Of Love (2010)
Another decade off, another formidable comeback: Sade sounded more impressive than ever on a song that reiterated her modus operandi over the years, standing immovable and strong while delivering her lyrics like regal commands.

Smooth Operator (1984)
Arguably the band's signature single, the accuracy with which its suave music, complete with sax solo, conveyed the business-class lifestyle of its subject set the tone for how they would be perceived over their entire career. As a credo, "We move in space with minimum waste and maximum joy" remains revelatory.

Turn My Back On You (1988)
Anchored by a bassline that feels like it could go on for ever, Sade's light touch defines this. Her casualness and distracted ba-ba-bas belie her devotion, but it's all in the details: the crucial pause in the way she sings "You are my ... religion," for instance.

By Your Side (2000)
After an eight-year hiatus, Sade returned to a radically altered R&B landscape and dropped her facade completely: the Lovers Rock album sounded more intimate and organic than ever before.

Cherish The Day (1992)
The band at their most abstractly evocative: at their best, they could do a remarkable amount with very little – as proved by this song, during which immense yearning is conveyed.

Pearls (1992)
Despite their association with luxe signifiers, it's often overlooked that Sade could turn her melancholy-suffused voice to social issues with surprising feel; the juxtaposition here of "a woman in Somalia" and the distinctly first-world metaphor "it hurts like brand new shoes" works because the tragedy is of both narrator and object being trapped in bubbles they can't escape from.

Is It A Crime (1986)
Sade's penchant for the epic was fully indulged on this six-and-a-half-minute 1986 single, from its length to its metaphors: her love here is "wider than Victoria Lake ... taller than the Empire State" – and, unsaid, clearly able to traverse half the globe as well.

Love Is Stronger Than Pride (1988)
Seemingly composed entirely from air currents and fragments of Spanish guitar, the lead single from the 1988 album of the same name showed Sade at their most minimal; appropriately enough, 14 years later German minimal techno legend Michael Mayer would cover it to stellar effect.

Give It Up (Kenny Larkin Remix) (2006)
The malleability of Sade's voice has always made her excellent source material for remixers, and Detroit techno legend Kenny Larkin's dreamy, percussive take on Give It Up is one of the finest out there.

Diddy-Dirty Money - Sade (2011)
Perhaps the greatest tribute to Sade's music is the esteem in which she is held by contemporary artists. Last year, a love of her music recurred throughout the work of Diddy and his Dirty Money group, reaching its peak in this astonishing song.

Playlist compiled by Alex Macpherson

Sade's smooth return a decade later

by Lisa Respers France,

February 10, 2010
CNN

Singer Sade takes years off between albums, but that hasn't stopped fans from embracing her music.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Sade released her first album in a decade on Tuesday

"Soldier of Love" marks only her sixth studio album in 25 years

The singer disappears for years between projects

Music writer: "There has never been a 'new Sade' "

RELATED TOPICS

Music

Grammy Awards

Entertainment

(CNN) -- The singer Sade is as well known for what she doesn't do as what she does.

She doesn't ordinarily sit down for extensive interviews. She almost never pops up on the red carpet or in the lenses of the paparazzi. And for someone known for her music, she hasn't released all that much of it.

Her new album, "Soldier of Love" -- which came out Tuesday -- marks only her sixth studio album in 25 years, and her first since the very successful "Lovers Rock," which came out in 2000.

Message boards and fans have been buzzing for months about her return.

"She has had an unusual career path, but I think for her it's worked because she sits outside of trends," said David Prince, news editor for Billboard.com. "She keeps it rare and special."

Technically, Sade is a band -- the singer and musicians Stuart Matthewman, Paul Spencer Denman and Andrew Hale along with drummer Pete Lewinson who has joined them on tour.

But ordinarily when people refer to Sade, they are talking about the smoky-voiced Helen Folasade Adu, daughter of a Nigerian father and an English mother.

A lot of us who were babies in the '70s, you might have had your first kiss to Sade [music] or your first fool-around to Sade.
--Fuse TV host Touré

Her first album, "Diamond Life," contained the hit singles "Smooth Operator," "Your Love Is King" and "Hang On To Your Love." It went multiplatinum and established her around the world.

Her deep, sultry voice quickly became a staple of U.S. radio stations featuring the "quiet storm" style of music, heavy on mood and romance.

Her performances over the years were lush in their understatement -- Sade resplendent, hair pulled back, jamming with her band. No guest rappers, no samples and no frenetic backup dancers. Just the music.

According to Billboard, all of her albums -- including a live album and a greatest hits album -- have made the Top 10, with "Lovers Rock" selling 3.9 million copies. She's also had eight Top 10 R&B singles in a row, including the latest, "Soldier of Love."

FUSE TV host Touré said Sade has carved an indelible path in the music industry and the hearts of fans.

"I think she's been a really important and valuable artist for a lot of us," Touré said. "A lot of us who were babies in the '70s, you might have had your first kiss to Sade [music] or your first fool-around to Sade. What a great story of an artist who can have a long career and not have a fall-off or some scandal and they're not the same anymore.

"In an era of over-sharing, here is an artist who has some mystique and who simply wants to share the music," he said.

That mystique has sometimes led to tales of everything from a nervous breakdown to drug and legal issues that some speculated kept Sade out of the limelight.

In a 1992 interview with Jet magazine, the singer said rumors that she had died made her "happy to be alive."

She's also happy to be hidden. "Having been travestied in print on many occasions, Sade rarely gives interviews," her Web site says. It then quotes the artist: "It's terrible this Fleet Street mentality that if something seems simple and easy, there must be something funny going on."

Her private life has remained fairly private.

According to a recent interview with The New York Times, Sade has been living for the past five years in rural England with her partner Ian Watts, her 13-year-old daughter, Ila, and Watts's 18-year-old son, Jack.

Music journalist Sonia Murray said other artists might want to take a cue from Sade's approach.

"There are a lot of people we wish would go away that long and then come back and be great," Murray said. "Maybe she continues to just want to go back to the creative well and make people miss her. It's worked for her every time."

Sade isn't the only one who's managed a long layoff, Murray said. After an eight-year hiatus, singer Maxwell returned with the critically acclaimed "BLACKsummer's Night" album, which earned him two Grammy awards.

Prior to the Grammys, he told CNN he loves Sade and how she has handled her career.

"She's been gone for 10 years, and it's a good feeling when you can walk back into it after not seeing a friend for so long, and then you sit down to have lunch or coffee or whatever, and it's almost like time did not freeze," he said. "That is what I would love to have with the public -- is to be able to kind of go away and to come back, and it's as if no time had passed between us."

And while the music industry has transformed in her absence in an era where so many artists rely on tools like social networking to build their fan base, Murray said Sade has the advantage of being one of a kind.

"There has never been a 'new Sade' or a younger version of Sade," Murray said. "She has established herself as a brand and as a desirable entity, no matter what the year or what her age."

And Sade? She just wants her career to be about the music -- so enjoy her recent exposure while you can.

"I do want to get on the stage and sing the songs," she told The New York Times. "But then I just want to disappear again."

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2011/may/18/secrets-sade-success

Behind the music: the secrets of Sade's success

Singer's former producer, Robin Millar, reveals an improbable route to global success

**'She sounded like nothing else' ... Sade producer Robin Millar PR**

Sade - "Smooth Operator"-- (Official Video):

Sade - "Cherish The Day":

Sade--E! Extreme Close-Up--TV interview

1993:

Arthel Neville interviewed Sade at the legendary Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, California. Lucky for us, Sade was so unusually candid and let us into her personal life and upbringing. Words cannot express how much I adore Sade and this interview that she honored us with. Glad that Arthel was able to get the reclusive Sade to open up and share her memories and laughter with her adoring fans. Enjoy, and remember, "Never give up on love!"

Sade - "Soldier of Love"--2011:

Lyrics:
I've lost the use of my heart
But I'm still alive
Still looking for the light
And the endless pool on the other side
It's the wild wild west
I'm doing my best
I'm at the borderline of my faith
I'm at the hinterland of my devotion
I'm in the front line of this battle of mine
But i'm still alive
I'm a soldier of love
Every day and night
I'm a soldier of love

All the days of my life

I've been torn up inside I've been left behind Tall I ride I have the will to survive In the wild, wild west Trying my hardest Doing my best to stay alive I am love's soldier I wait for the sound I know that love will come I know that love will come Turn it all around I am lost but i don't doubt Tall I ride I have the will to survive I n the wild, wild west Trying my hardest Doing my best to stay alive I am love's soldier I wait for the sound I know that love will come I know that love will come Turn it all around I'm a soldier of love I'm a soldier Still wait for love to come Turn it all around I'm a soldier of love I'm a soldier

Sade - "Soldier of Love" - Live@ Citizens Bank Arena, Ontario, California [Bring Me Home Live Tour 2011]:

Sade - "Soldier of Love": Making Of The Album

Sade’s The Ultimate Collection feat. 25 classic songs + 4 new tracks is available now at http://www.smarturl.it/sadeuc

Music video by Sade performing Making Of The Album. (C) 2010 Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited:

Sade - "Cherish The Day"- (Live Version 2):

Sade - "Paradise" (Live at the SDSU Open Air Theatre - 1994):

Sade - "Jezebel" (Live at the SDSU Open Air Theatre - 1994):

Sade - "Feel No Pain"

Sade - "Pearls"- (Live)

smooth operators

February 11, 2010

Missy Elliott, Rakim, Talib Kweli, and More Talk to Vulture About the Greatness of Sade

by Amos Barshad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sade_%28singer%29

Sade (singer)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sade OBE

Background information
Birth name	Helen Folasade Adu
Born	16 January 1959 (age 56) Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria
Origin	London, England
Occupation(s)	Singer songwriter composer arranger record producer
Years active	1983–present
Musical career
Genres	Smooth jazz soul jazz R&B quiet storm sophisti-pop soft rock adult contemporary
Labels	Portrait, Epic, RCA
Associated acts	Sade
Website	www.sade.com

Helen Folasade Adu, OBE (Yoruba: Fọláṣadé Adú; born 16 January 1959), known as Sade (/ʃɑːˈdeɪ/ shah-DAY), is a British Nigerian singer, songwriter, composer, and record producer. Following a brief stint of studying fashion design and modelling Adu began back up singing for a band named Pride, during this time she attracted attention from record labels and along with other members left Pride and formed Sade. Following a record deal Sade and her eponymous band released their debut album Diamond Life (1984), the album was a commercial success and sold over six million copies, becoming one of the top-selling debut recordings of the '80s and the best-selling debut ever by a British female vocalist.

Following the release of the band's debut album they went on to release a string of multi-platinum selling albums, their follow up Promise was released in 1985 and peaked at number one in the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200 and went on to sell four million copies in the US. Sade would later go on to make her acting debut in the film Absolute Beginners, before the release of the band's albums Stronger Than Pride (1988), Love Deluxe (1992) and Lovers Rock (2000) all of which went multi-platinum in the US. After the release of Lovers Rock the band embarked on a ten-year hiatus in which Sade raised her daughter. Following the hiatus the band returned with their sixth album Soldier of Love (2010) which became a commercial success and won a Grammy award.

Sade has been nominated six times for the Brit Award for Best British Female.^[1] In 2002, she was awarded an OBE for services to music, and she dedicated her award to "all black women in England".^[2] In 2012, Sade was listed at No. 30 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women In Music.^[3] Sade has a contralto vocal range.^[4]

Early life

Sade was born in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.^[5] Her middle name, Folasade, means "honour confers your crown".^[6] Her parents, Adebisi Adu, a Nigerian lecturer in economics of Yoruba background, and Anne Hayes, an English district nurse, met in London, married in 1955 and moved to Nigeria.^[5]^[7] Her parents separated, however, and Anne Hayes returned to England, taking four-year-old^[8] Sade and older brother Banji with her to live with their grandparents just outside Colchester, Essex. When Sade was 11 years old, she moved to Holland-on-Sea, Essex, to live with her mother,^[9] and after completing school at 18 she moved to London and studied at Saint Martin's School of Art.^[5]^[8]

Career

Beginnings and breakthrough

After studying fashion design, and later modeling briefly, Sade began backup singing with British band Pride, during this time she formed a writing partnership with Pride's guitarist/saxophonist Stuart Matthewman; together, backed by Pride's rhythm section, they began doing their own sets at Pride gigs.^[10] Her solo performances of the song "Smooth Operator" attracted the attention of record companies, and in 1983 Sade and Matthewman split from Pride along with keyboardist Andrew Hale, bassist Paul Denman and drummer Paul Cooke to form the band Sade.^[5]^[10] By the time she performed her first show at London's Heaven nightclub she had become so popular that 1,000 people were turned away at the door.^[7] In May 1983, Sade performed their first US show at the Danceteria Club in New York City. They received more attention from the media and record companies and separated finally. On 18 October 1983 Sade Adu signed with Epic Records, while the rest of the band signed in 1984.^[11]

Following the record deal the group began recording their debut album, Diamond Life took six weeks to record and was recorded completely at The Power Plant in London.^[12] Diamond Life was released in 1984, reached number two in the UK Album Chart, sold over 1.2 million copies in the UK, and won the Brit Award for Best British Album in 1985.^[13] The album was also a hit internationally, reaching number one in several countries and the top ten in the US where it has sold in excess of 4 million copies. Diamond Life had international sales of over 6 million copies, becoming one of the top-selling debut recordings of the '80s and the best-selling debut ever by a British female vocalist.^[10]

Your Love Is King was released as the albums lead single on 25 February 1984, the song was a success in European territories charting at number seven in Ireland and number six on the UK Singles Chart.^[14]^[15] The song was less successful in the US where it peaked at number fifty four on the US Billboard Hot 100^[16] The third single Smooth Operator became the most successful song in the US from the album, Smooth Operator was first released on 15 September 1984. In Europe the song fared well peaking at number nineteen in the UK,^[17] the song also reached the top twenty in Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany.^[18]^[19] The song was a huge success in the US where it peaked at number five on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the US Billboard Hot Black Singles, as well as peaking at number one on the US Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.^[20]

Acting debut, continued success and hiatus

Sade Adu in 2011.

In late 1985, Sade released their second album, Promise, which peaked at No. 1 in both the UK and the US.^[21]^[22] "Promise" became the bands first album to reach number one on the US Billboard 200, the album reached the summit in 1986 and spent two weeks at the peak position^[23] and went on to sell four million copies in the region and was certified four times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.^[24] The album spawned two singles "Never as Good as the First Time" and "The Sweetest Taboo," the latter of which was released as the albums lead single and stayed on the US Hot 100 for six months.^[25] "The Sweetest Taboo" peaked at number five on the US Billboard Hot 100, one on the US adult Contemporary chart and number three on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks.^[26] Sade was so popular that some radio stations reinstated the '70s practice of playing album tracks, adding "Is It a Crime" and "Tar Baby" to their playlists.^[25] The following year in 1986 the band won a Grammy Award for Best New Artist.^[27]

In 1986 Sade made her acting debut in Absolute Beginners, a film adapted from the Colin MacInnes book of the same name about life in late 1950s London. Sade played the role of Athene Duncannon and lent her vocals to the films accompanying soundtrack.^[28] The film was screened out of competition at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival and grossed £1.8 million in the UK.^[29] Sade's third album, Stronger Than Pride, was released in May 1988, like Sade's previous albums "Stronger Than Pride" became a commercial success and was certified three times platinum in the US.^[24] "Stronger Than Pride" was promoted by four singles, the albums second single "Paradise" peaked at number sixteen on the US Billboard Hot 100 and peaked at number one the US Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, becoming the bands first single to do so.^[30]

"Love Deluxe" was released as the band's fourth studio album on 26 October 1992, the album peaked at number three on the US Billboard 200^[31] and has sold 3.4 million copies in the United States.^[32] The album was later certified four times platinum by the RIAA for shipments of four million copies.^[33] The album was also commercially successful else where reaching number one in France,^[34] and reaching the top ten in New Zealand,^[35] Sweden,^[36] Switzerland^[37] and the UK.^[38] The album went on to be certified Gold in the United Kingdom. In November 1994 the group released their first compilation album, The Best of Sade, the album was another top ten hit in both the United Kingdom and the United States,^[39] the compilation was certified Platinum in the UK and Quadruple-Platinum in the US respectively.^[40] The compilation album included Sade's previous material from her previous albums as well as a cover of Please Send Me Someone to Love originally performed by Percy Mayfield.^[41]

Lovers Rock and second hiatus

The Lovers Rock Tour promotional poster

Following an eight-year hiatus Sade released their fifth studio album Lovers Rock, the album was released to positive reviews from music critics.^[42] The album reached number eighteen on the UK Albums Chart and number three on the US Billboard 200 and has since been certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA),^[43] having sold 3.9 million copies in the United States by February 2010.^[44] On 27 February 2002, the album earned Sade the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album.^[45] "By Your Side" was released as the lead single from the album, the track was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, losing out to Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird" and has been listed as the 48th greatest love song of all time by VH1.^[46]

To promote the album Sade and the band embarked on their fifth concert tour entitled Lovers Rock Tour. The tour was announced via Sade's website in April 2001.^[47] The announcement stated the tour would begin in the summer of 2001 with 30 shows. Initial dates were rescheduled due to extended rehearsal time. The shows sold well, with many stops adding additional shows. In August 2001, the tour was extended by eight weeks, due to ticket demand.^[48] Deemed by many critics as a comeback tour, it marks the band's first performances since 1994 and last until 2011. Although many believed the trek would expand to other countries, this did not come to fruition. With over 40 shows, it became the 13th biggest tour in North America, earning over 26 million.^[49]

Following the tour Sade released their first live album Lovers Live, released on 5 February 2002 by Epic Records. Lovers Live reached number ten on the US Billboard 200 and number fifty-one on the UK Albums Chart, Sade's first album to miss the top twenty in the UK. The album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on 7 March 2002, having sold US sales of 562,000 copies,^[44] while the DVD was certified platinum on 30 January 2003 for shipping 100,000 copies. Following the release of Lovers Rock (2000) Sade took a ten-year hiatus, during which she raised her daughter and moved to the Caribbean. During this time Sade made only one rare public appearance: this took place in 2002 in order to accept an OBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music. Later she moved to the Gloucestershire countryside where, in 2005, she bought a run-down, stone-built cottage near Stroud to renovate .^[50] In 2002, she appeared on the Red Hot Organization's Red Hot and Riot, a compilation CD in tribute to the music of fellow Nigerian musician, Fela Kuti. She recorded a remix of her hit single, "By Your Side", for the album and was billed as a co-producer.

Recent projects

Sade Adu and Band at the SAP-Arena, Mannheim, Germany, in 2011.

In 2010, The Sunday Times named her the most successful solo British female artist in history.^[5] Sade's sixth studio album Soldier of Love was released worldwide on 8 February 2010, the band's first album of new material in ten years.^[51] Upon release the album received positive reviews and became a success.^[52] The album debuted atop the Billboard 200 in the United States with first-week sales of 502,000 copies, becoming Sade's first number-one debut and second number-one album on the chart, as well as the best sales week for an album by a group since AC/DC's Black Ice entered the Billboard 200 at number one in November 2008.^[53] Following the release of Soldier of Love, the album became the band's second number one on the US Billboard 200; in doing so the band became the act with the longest hiatus between number one albums, as the band's "Promise" (1986) and "Soldier of Love" (2010) were separated by 23 years, 10 months and 2 weeks.^[54]

The first single "Soldier of Love" premiered on US radio on 8 December 2009,^[55]^[56] and was released digitally on 11 January 2010.^[57] Subsequent singles "Babyfather" and "The Moon and the Sky" were serviced to US urban AC radio on 13 April and 24 August 2010, respectively.^[58]^[59] At the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011, the title track won Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, while the song "Babyfather" was nominated for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.^[60]

In April 2011, the band began their Sade Live tour (also known as the Once in a Lifetime Tour or the Soldier of Love Tour)^[61]^[62] The tour visited Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia the tour supports the band's sixth studio album, Soldier of Love and their second compilation album, The Ultimate Collection. This trek marks the band's first tour in nearly a decade.^[63] The tour ranked 27th in Pollstar's "Top 50 Worldwide Tour (Mid-Year)", earning over 20 million dollars.^[64] At the conclusion of 2011, the tour placed tenth on Billboard's annual, "Top 25 Tours", earning over $50 million with 59 shows.^[65]

Personal life

She squatted in Wood Green, North London, in the 1980s, with her then-boyfriend Robert Elms.^[66] In 1989, she married Spanish film director Carlos Pliego. Their marriage ended in 1995.^[5] She gave birth to a daughter, Mickailia (who studied at Wycliffe College in Gloucestershire), in 1995 after a relationship with Jamaican music producer Bob Morgan. She moved briefly to the Caribbean to live with him in the late 1990s, but they later separated and she returned to England.^[67] She lives in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, in the English countryside and, prior to the release of Soldier of Love in 2010, the Daily Mail described her as "famously reclusive".^[68] On her disavowal of overt fame as well as the label 'recluse', she said in 2012: "Artistically, I have high aspirations. I don’t want to do anything less than the best I can do."^[69]^{[relevant? – discuss]}

Legacy

Sade and the band were credited as being Influential to neo soul, the band achieved success in the 1980s with music that featured a sophisti-pop style, incorporating elements of soul, pop, smooth jazz, and quiet storm.^[70]^[71] The band was part of a new wave of British R&B-oriented artists during the late-1980s and early 1990s that also included Soul II Soul, Caron Wheeler, The Brand New Heavies, Simply Red, Jamiroquai, and Lisa Stansfield.^[72] AllMusic's Alex Henderson writes that, "Many of the British artists who emerged during that period had a neo-soul outlook and were able to blend influences from different eras".^[72] Sade has been nominated six times for the Brit Award for Best British Female.^[1]

Sade's US certified sales so far stand at 23.5 million units according to Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA),^[73] and have sold more than 50 million units worldwide to date. The band were ranked at No. 50 on VH1's list of the "100 greatest artists of all time."^[74]^[75] In 2012, Sade was listed at No. 30 on VH1's 100 Greatest Women In Music.^[3] Sade has a contralto vocal range,^[4] that has been described as "husky and restrained" and was compared to Jazz singer Billie Holiday.^[76] Following the coining of the term "quiet storm" by Smokey Robinson, Sade was credited for helping give the genre a worldwide audience.^[76]

Sade's work has influenced numerous artists. Rapper Missy Elliott cited Sade's performance of "Smooth Operator" as one of her favourites. Tajai, Souls of Mischief, stated he grew up listening to Sade's music, as did Don Will, Tanya Morgan who also described Sade as one of his favorite artists.^[77] Other rappers to cite Sade as an influence include Malice, Clipse and Pusha, Clipse. Kanye West also stated he is a fan of Sade.^[77] American singer-songwriter Beyonce has cited Sade has an influence, calling Sade's music a "true friend".^[78] The late singer Aaliyah noted Sade as an influence stating she admired Sade because "she stays true to her style no matter what... she's an amazing artist, an amazing performer... and I absolutely love her."^[79]

American R&B singer Brandy has cited Sade has one of her major vocal influences.^[80] Singer Keri Hilson said "My Dad would whistle Sade melodies randomly all the time. As a kid, I used to try to whistle along to "Cherish the Day" or "Sweetest Taboo." He was a real Sade fan and made me one, too!".^[77] Rakim stated he grew up listening to Sade's soul music, stated he was influenced by her voice and style, Rakim has also referenced Sade's song "Smooth Operator".^[77] Talib Kweli stated he learned about precision from Sade due to her performance of Love Deluxe in its entirety at Madison Square Garden.^[77] Singer Jennifer Lopez cited Sade as an influence for her sixth studio album Brave (2007).^[81] Kelly Rowland stated she is inspired by Sade Adu and says that "she has a style that's totally her own".^[82]^[83]

Discography

For more information on this topic, see Sade discography.

Studio albums

1984: Diamond Life
1985: Promise
1988: Stronger Than Pride
1992: Love Deluxe
2000: Lovers Rock
2010: Soldier of Love

Other albums

Collaboration

Absolute Beginners OST (Virgin, 1986)

Tours

1984 Tour (1984)
Promise Tour (1986)
Stronger Than Pride Tour (1988)
Love Deluxe World Tour (1993)
Lovers Rock Tour (2001)
Sade Live (2011)

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External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sade Adu.

[hide] v t e Sade

Sade Stuart Matthewman Paul Spencer Denman Andrew Hale Paul Anthony Cook

Studio albums	Diamond Life Promise Stronger Than Pride Love Deluxe Lovers Rock Soldier of Love

Other albums	Munich Concert Remix Deluxe The Best of Sade Live Lovers Live The Ultimate Collection Bring Me Home: Live 2011

Singles	"Your Love Is King" "When Am I Going to Make a Living" "Hang On to Your Love" "Smooth Operator" "The Sweetest Taboo" "Never as Good as the First Time" "Is It a Crime" "Love Is Stronger Than Pride" "Paradise" "Nothing Can Come Between Us" "Turn My Back on You" "No Ordinary Love" "Feel No Pain" "Kiss of Life" "Cherish the Day" "Pearls" "By Your Side" "King of Sorrow" "Lovers Rock" "Somebody Already Broke My Heart" (Live) "Soldier of Love" "Babyfather" "The Moon and the Sky" "Still in Love with You"

Concert tours	Promise Tour Stronger Than Pride Tour Love Deluxe World Tour Lovers Rock Tour Sade Live

Related articles	Discography Awards and nominations Sweetback

Sound Projections

Welcome to Sound Projections

Saturday, August 15, 2015

SADE (b. January 16, 1959): Singer, songwriter, composer, musician, arranger, lyricist, and ensemble leader

A Reluctant Return to the Spotlight

Sade's whims haven't failed her yet

The singer and her band put out a hit album, their first in nine years, in February but aren't touring behind it until next year. Oh, and after nine years of vegetarianism, she's eating meat again.

Why Sade is bigger in the US than Adele

Sade: the playlist

Sade's smooth return a decade later

Behind the music: the secrets of Sade's success

Sade's Greatest Hits - Best Of Sade:

TRACKLIST:

Sade Greatest Hits:

Sade - "The Sweetest Taboo"

Sade - "Is It A Crime?" (Live in Performance):

Music video by Sade performing "Is It A Crime?". (C) 2002 Sony Music Entertainment (UK) Ltd.

Sade - "The Sweetest Taboo" (Live Video From San Diego)--This is smoking!