It’s late 2010. I am a ten-year-old lover of music. But my taste is mostly for American hip-hop, so I bop my head and rap along to tongue-twisting verses by Jay-Z and Nas, 50 Cent and Eminem, 2Pac and Biggie. My parents, however—themselves great enthusiasts of music—favour soul and R&B, so there are shelves stacked with records by Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, Mary Blige and Brandy. One evening, my dad comes home from work with two new records. One is Aṣa’s sophomore, Beautiful Imperfection, and the other is a greatest hits record, The Best of Sade. We’d heard Aṣa’s self-titled debut and loved it, but Sade is a novelty to me and my siblings.
We listen to Aṣa first and fall in love with it immediately; and then we switch to Sade. My younger siblings are asleep already, so it’s just me and my parents. I lean back on the sofa as my dad pops the CD in. The first song that plays is “Your Love Is King.” I sigh, tell myself I don’t like it. The record progresses until we’re at the third song, “Smooth Operator.” The drums at the beginning and the groove the song breaks into are enough to have me entranced. I sit up, nod along. My Mom sings out loud, tries to match Sade’s vocals, laughing when she botches the notes, and my Dad watches me intently. Perhaps he knows that I am becoming initiated, developing a connection to the music. I become a fan that night.
I wouldn’t learn, until years later, that Sade is actually an English band named after Sade Adu, the lead singer and songwriter. Other members include: Paul S. Denman (bass guitarist), Andrew Hale (keyboardist) and Stuart Matthewman (guitarist and saxophonist).
Nowadays, when I listen to Sade, I feel a rush of nostalgia, a beckoning in the melody for a time when I was younger, naïve and had ears untrained for such music; a time when I learned that my parents know better. Love Deluxe, the band’s 4th album, and also their magnum opus, is the record I return to the most, the one I recommend to friends and anyone who’s interested. But if you’re looking to get into their discography, the songs below are a great place to start.
10. By Your Side: In 2000, when the band released Lover’s Rock, they were ending an eight-year hiatus that had started after they released Love Deluxe in ’92.
Lover’s Rock not only re-ushered them into a music landscape dominated by R&B, but also marked their departure from the jazz-centred records of their earlier career. This new album was opened up by “By Your Side,” a soulful ballad that has Sade singing about reassurance and unwaning love to a lover (or friend), making promises of steadfastness, even in the worst of times. The chorus is simple: “Ohh, when you’re cold, I’ll be there / Hold you tight to me.” But even this simplicity has weight, and is made more convincing by the candour Sade sings with. This song might merely seem like a love song, which is good enough, but it can also be seen as Sade’s reengagement with devout fans, pledging to never leave them, even though she had been gone for so long.
9. Paradise: There has always been an ardour in Sade’s singing, a warmth that feels both precipitous and restrained at the same time. Nowhere is this more represented than in Paradise, a bass-heavy track with a groove so funky one can’t help but get up and dance. The writing here is minimalist but efficient.
8. Is It A Crime: Promise, the band’s second album, released in 1985, is a “cool” record, the kind that sets the mood for a sultry and heavy night. This is clear from the beginning of the album. “Is It A Crime,” the opener, begins with a flamboyant blast of horns and descends into a mellower place. Sade sings about unrequited love to a possibly estranged lover, who has also been unfaithful, with such coyness that it can move one to tears. “Is It A Crime” is one of the longest songs in the band’s catalogue, but the music is so compelling that you almost forget its length.
7. Love Is Stronger Than Pride: There is something hypnotic about Sade’s singing in this song, something that makes the listener feel airborne. The instrumental itself lends credence to that feeling, with its smoky aura. Like in the title, Sade casts aside the constraint that her ego might present and unabashedly professes her love. There is something enticing about this naked profession of love, even though she expresses it in only a few words, so that when she makes lofty promises, like in the opening lines, it sounds convincing.
6. Like A Tattoo: During the Love Deluxe Tour in ’93, while performing in San Diego, Sade Adu—dressed in an elegant bejewelled white dress that lent her an angelic aura—explained that “Like A Tattoo” is the song of a man she met in a bar in New York. It is one of the most moving songs the band has ever created. Over haunting strings and a percussion-free instrumental, Sade paints a picture: that of a regret-filled man who, fourteen years after, remembers, in such excruciating detail, a heinous act he committed during wartime. “Like A Tattoo” is the story of not just one man, but of all of us, the frailty of our humanity and how much we can become misshapen by our own mistakes.
5. Your Love Is King: One of the appeals of the band is that while their discography is replete with love songs, they have managed to never sound cloying or sappy. After an explosive opener to the album Diamond Life, “Your Love Is King” comes in—romantic but not maudlin, expressive but not effusive, and overall a great song about love, the chief of emotions. From the horns that steer the song to a perfect melody, to Sade Adu’s feathery vocals, to lyrics about a love with a royal air to it, “Your Love Is King” is one of their finest songs.
4. The Sweetest Taboo: The formula of this song seems quite obvious when the elements are parsed: the sound of rainfall, a simple but catchy drum pattern, sensuous strings, lyrics about indulging in (sexual) pleasure even though it is forbidden. But then, Sade are inimitable, and no one could have done it like them. “The Sweetest Taboo” has been sampled countless times, a testament of the song’s staying quality.
3. Kiss Of Life: It is immediately apparent, from the baseline and the piano that sets this song off, that it is going to be a love song. Not a love fraught with doubts and heartbreak, but a seemingly perfect love, a flawless union. In the lyrics, Sade puts her lover on a pedestal by suggesting he has been led to her by a divine presence. When she sings about the colour of love in the sky, it sets a mood. This is the song one would play with a lover while watching the sunset.
2. Smooth Operator: When Sade Adu co-wrote this song with Ray St. John in 1982, she was still a backup singer for Pride—the short-lived British band whose original members broke away to form Sade. The song wasn’t recorded until ’83, and appeared as the first song in the band’s debut album, Diamond Life. Even then, it must have been obvious, as they recorded the song, that it would be a hit. Over a gorgeous groove led on by a bold saxophone, Sade sings about a sly lover; a flinty, unscrupulous playboy who seeks nothing more than a transient relationship with his partners, after which he breaks their heart. For first-time listeners who had just gotten the album, Diamond Life, this song was their introduction to Sade’s virtuosity in crafting songs with writing that is in perfect congruity with the production. And for ten-year-old me, it was the first of their songs that I fell in love with.
1. No Ordinary Love: Love Deluxe, the band’s fourth album, released in ’92, is an album of aesthetic wonder. It is so sonically cohesive, that the songs glide into each other with a grace that is simply bewitching. The record begins with “No Ordinary Love,” a seven-minute track in which Sade sings about a love cut short before full blossom, and the possibility that that love would have been extraordinary. There is a weariness in her voice in the beginning when she sings: “I gave you all the love I got, I gave you more than I could give.” Tiredness, yes, but tenacity. Sade’s singing is marvellous, but the production is even more so. The bass (soft but piercing), the synths, and the guitar, come together to form what gives the song a certain aquatic quality, a feature that suffuses the album in its entirety. Sade has mastered the craft of album openers, but it is here, with this beauty of a track, that they excel the most. This is arguably one of the best love songs ever, but also the best song they have in their catalogue.♦
Abah Onoja is an Idoma-Igbo writer from Èkó. He is a Literary History Researcher at Afapinen.