Sade: British-Nigerian beauty, global star
The album was recorded in England and produced by long-time collaborator Mike Pela. If anyone takes huge hiatuses, it would be Sade. She takes time out with her family, then slaves to the studio. But, every time she gets there some magic happens. Now, she has decided to come back and give her fans more […]
The album was recorded in England and produced by long-time collaborator Mike Pela. If anyone takes huge hiatuses, it would be Sade. She takes time out with her family, then slaves to the studio. But, every time she gets there some magic happens. Now, she has decided to come back and give her fans more smooth grooves just in time for Valentine’s Day. Whenever a critic is trying to describe a pop act with a smooth, laid- back, sophisticated, vaguely jazzy sound, her name is immediately invoked. Since taking the pop world by quiet storm in the mid-1980s, dozens of bands have tried to copy the restrained style she and her band have pioneered. Not one has yet managed to replace Sade as the standard for sultriness.
In 1959, Sade was born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria. Her father, Adebisi Adu, was a Nigerian-born economics professor. Her mother, Anne, was a British nurse. Her parents met while Adebisi Adu was a graduate student at the London School of Economics. After marrying and having a son, the couple moved to Ibadan, where Adu had landed a teaching job. Sade was born shortly after their arrival in Nigeria.
By the time Sade was four, her parents had separated, and, in 1963, she moved with her mother and brother back to England. They lived with Sade’s grandparents while her mother finished nursing school, after which they moved out on their own. Sade and her friends found solace from their dismal surroundings in dance clubs. By her teens, Sade had developed a passion for jazz, funk, and soul music.
At 17, Sade left for London to study fashion and design at St. Martin’s College of Art in the city’s West End. Upon graduating, she and a friend launched their own business designing men’s clothing. The design business never became very profitable, and Sade supplemented her income by taking modeling jobs, which she did not especially enjoy. Sade’s entry into the music world did not take place through any plan of her own. A popular London funk group called Pride was looking for a backup singer. Her lack of any experience as a vocalist notwithstanding, their manager thought that Sade’s stunning looks made her a good candidate. She auditioned for the spot and was initially rejected. When nobody better showed up over the next few weeks, however, Sade was given the job. She continued designing clothes for a living, but music became her main evening hobby.
As a backup singer, Sade quickly developed a following of her own, and at the suggestion of Pride’s manager, she and a few other members of the band worked up a set of songs to perform during Pride’s between- set breaks, with Sade taking center stage. Sade and Pride saxophonist Stuart Mathewman teamed up to write several catchy songs for the splinter group, and, before long, the newly-dubbed band Sade was overshadowing Pride.
As a band, Sade created a stir almost immediately. Its first break came in 1983, when they were engaged to play a concert at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, sponsored by the glossy British music and fashion magazine The Face. The artsy crowd was captivated by Sade, who was backed only by Mathewman and a small rhythm section. By October of that year, the band, which now included bassist Paul Denman, keyboardist Andrew Hale, and drummer Paul Cooke (later replaced by Dave Early), had signed with Epic. Sade’s first single, “Your Love Is King,” was released the following February. The Diamond Life album came out just five months later. With one exception, all of the songs on Diamond Life were cowritten by Sade and Mathewman.
After a huge world tour that included stops in Japan and Australia, and full-blown stadium concerts in the United States, Sade was ready drop out of sight again, this time for an even longer period. She moved to Spain and suffered through an unhappy one-year marriage to documentary filmmaker Carlos Scola.
After the breakup of her marriage, Sade moved back to London. There she bought an old house, gutted it almost entirely, and built a fully- equipped recording studio in the basement. She then reassembled the band and began work on their next album, Love Deluxe, released in 1992. In spite of Sade’s extended absence from the public eye, her fans had not forgotten her. The album sold well, remaining on the Billboard charts for 90 weeks and spawning another international tour of sold out concerts in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
In 1995, Sade took another career break, this time to have a baby with partner Bob Morgan, a record producer. Although the gaps between Sade’s new projects seem to be widening, her voice–both as a singer and songwriter–remains a distinctive one in the pop music industry. Until a new star emerges who can out-cool Sade, her periodic reappearances are likely to be greeted with enthusiasm by her millions of fans, loyalists of the laid-back.