Sade – the smooth operator who is always by your side

Unlike hardcore fans, who have been sharing images, personal recollections and music ever since I was assigned this to story to coincide with Sade turning 63 this week, I didn’t grow up listening to her.

I don’t have the strong memories of hearing Your Love is King in some uncle or neighbour’s backyard, nor did I cherish the day when Love Deluxe, which turned 30 in October 2022 and is considered her best work by some, was released. 

Besides, my parents didn’t have any vinyls of her music in their collection, so there’s that. 

My discovery of the superstar’s music falls somewhere between the booming bass riddims of reggae and x-ray/dub, the hip-teasing soukous of the DRC — preserved today in the now-global sound of Afrobeats — and the hardcore boom bap and gangsta rap production of the 1990s, kwaito music notwithstanding, and the shimmery pop of the early 2000s, combined with a growing fascination with just about every sub-genre of metal. 

Y2K or no Y2K

It must’ve been in 2000 when the promo video for her Lovers Rock album played on television. The single By Your Side was already doing heavy rotation on the radio. I dug the music; in many ways it was on the same wavelength as the neo-soul which had become a staple among many who came of age in that era. 

Such was the universal impact of that singular moment that my homie Sakumzi, who was still residing eMdantsane at that point, found inspiration to pick up a guitar and pursue what’s becoming a lifelong fascination with creating music.

Throughout that wave of post-Y2K rush, and the 2001 Twin Towers explosions that irreversibly altered the world we knew, Sade never got uninstalled from the gallery of memories that populated my universe. 

There would be a world tour in support of the 2000 release, an accompanying live DVD, Lovers Live (2002), and a whole new era of yutes my age and younger eager to connect with the elusive star’s earlier material. Elusive, because it was to be another decade before we got another studio album from her in the form of 2010’s Soldier of Love. 

By last year, when the announcement was made that Sade was working on material for a new album, the vocalist, a well-established recluse, had experienced what it’s like to support a child during their transition. 

Sociopolitically, Britain had exited the European Union, and the Tories had expelled the Windrush generation. Arguably this made an album like Lovers Rock, which draws from the rich Caribbean-Jamaican tradition of ska and roots reggae (which  birthed an entire genre of the same name) possible. 

The Infamous Recluse

Sade has generated her fair share of tabloid rumours during her 40-year-plus career, such as the kerfuffle that arose when she separated from her Spanish film director husband Carlos Pliego in 1995; the rumoured substance abuse problem when she chose to take a break from the industry — “They don’t understand that you’ve got things in your life that might be more important,” she said in an interview — and the encounter with Jamaican law officials in 1998, which resulted in her fleeing the country and having an arrest warrant issued, which only expired last year. Despite this, critical praise for her music has yet to dip to sub-par levels.

While the many of the interviews I dug up in order to write this article make reference to her looks — “beautiful”, “elegant”, “queen of style”, etc — there were none that mentioned the conditions under which she came into music. 

Helen Folasade Adu — who turned 63 on 16 January — was born in Ibadan State to a Nigerian father and a British mother. Sade’s parents separated when she was very young and her elder brother moved to England with her and their mother upon the split, an incident she referred to in an interview as traumatic. 

She got a head start in music as a member of the band Pride, toured the world, and left the outfit to pursue a solo career. The guitarist-saxophonist-songwriter Stuart Matthewman had already been performing a duo set with Sade and they made a joint decision to leave Pride and embark upon a new endeavour. 

They managed to convince drummer Paul Anthony Cook and bassist and songwriter Paul Denman to take the leap in that new direction, recorded a few demos, and finally landed a record deal.

All the bells and their whistles

Music industry-wise, Sade broke through during a time when record labels still held sway over musicians’ career trajectories. There were no streaming services, no widespread internet use and definitely no YouTube. 

Social media as we know it was but an idea incubating in academic research units, much like the artificial intelligence iterations that are threatening to usurp the very foundation of visual and literary truths as we’ve come to know them.

Physical album sales determined whether or not an artist would continue to have a career, too. This latter feature, Sade didn’t struggle with. Her debut album, 1984’s Diamond Life (Epic Records), reached number two on the UK charts, buoyed by singles such as Your Love is King and Smooth Operator. 

It won the Brit Award for Best British Album the following year and subsequently sold 10 million units worldwide, an unheard-of feat for a woman during that era. 

Sade has won Grammy Awards under the Best New Artist (1986), Best Vocal Pop Album (2002) and Best R&B Performance (1994, 2011) categories. She’s also been nominated for Soul Train, NAACP Image, Billboard Music and Mobo Awards many times throughout her career.

Not so shabby for an artist who fell into making music; who never had any aspirations to, or expectations of, becoming a superstar. 

The expectation to perform, to show up

One is often driven to wonder what drives our collective desire to see artists we admire show up on demand. It’s the same for Beyoncé as it was for Prince, for Dave Chappelle, for Thandiswa Mazwai, for Rihanna — plenty of public figures are put under this pressure to constantly show up, to smile, to be gracious, to essentially perform niceties on a level not required from anyone else. 

And when their music is out, we demand more — a video, a live show, a tour that includes our territory on its itinerary. 

Sade answered the question of why she’s taken long breaks from the public gaze in an interview with Greg Tate on the occasion of Lovers Rock’s release. She said she’s never been worried about her time away because “being a singer isn’t like a day job”. She needs time to devote to other things, life things like attending to the health of a relative or being present to see her child grow. 

“Coming back for me was all about finding a space in my life again where I could devote myself to music,” she said. 

She is also intentional about creating her art; “if you don’t really feel it and you’re just going through the motions, the results aren’t going to be satisfactory. They’ll be less than your expectations of yourself.”

But … aren’t Sade, like, a band?

Such has been the overwhelming focus on Sade the person, that we inadvertently forget that Sade, the band, is what makes the music so memorable. The collective effort of everyone involved contributes towards the wholesome whole — what musician Tumi Mogorosi rightly refers to as group theory, as per the dictates of the master wordsmith Amiri Baraka.  

This compulsion to focus on the individual is best encompassed in singer-songwriter Msaki’s words about the spaces she finds herself operating in. 

“You’ve been thrusted into this Afro-pop songstress, the band dissolves in your name, and everybody falls into your identity, and they become these faceless people that are just moving instruments and sound around you, and you’re supposedly all that exists. 

“It’s so unhealthy but I understand why it happens.” 

In Sade’s case, it happened because the media landscape that built her up — and has sought to destroy her at times — prioritises looks over everything. The gods be damned that her talent has guarded her along every twist and turn.

When the announcement came that the band would be the first residents of the newly renovated Miraval Studios, owned by Brad Pitt and French producer Damien Quintard and on the 900-hectare estate Château de Miraval, about 50km from Marseille in France, it was both a return to familiar territory — Promise and Stronger Than Pride were recorded there — and an assertion of their status in the line of great bands of their era and before. Pink Floyd, The Cranberries, AC/DC, and Rammstein have all inhabited the space.

Cultural impact

An artist as enduring as Sade has been is bound to influence entire generations of artists beyond music; that’s a given. Beyoncé — whose Life is But a Dream documentary features Sade’s By Your Side while her husband Jay-Z records the singer on a boat — has said that there have been a number of times when she has turned to the multi-award winner for comfort; how “her music has been a true friend, as all true music should be”. 

In film, too, Sade comes up, most recently during an episode of the Donald Glover-created series Atlanta. The seventh episode of the fourth and final season opens with Your Love is King playing while two characters drive through the woods.

Earn (Glover) is at the wheel, while his on-again, off-again partner Van (played by Zazie Beets) sits in the passenger seat. They’re discussing a turnoff, one they might or might not have missed. 

“You’re the ruler of my heart, your kisses ring,” goes the lyric, as the camera angle shifts to reveal what both actors are seeing. It’s all green, serene, the embodiment of what comes to mind when the word “calm” gets mentioned. 

And, think about it, the eighties and early nineties might have been full of models decked out in jeans and matching tops but it’s the image of Sade in the same outfit that endures to this day. 

She was the prototype for an icon, much like, say, Marley was in the seventies, Dylan was in the sixties, and Miles Davis’s muted trumpet and effortless cool was in the fifties. Sade exudes musical brilliance, the prototype for a proto-culture — a boundless artist whose songs continue to be the bedrock to revolutionary baby-making and gut-wrenching heartbreak. 

And when the band shifted their sonic direction with the release of Lovers Rock, they managed to carry their old fans as well as acquire an entirely new generation who’d only heard of them in passing. 

The band might or might not end up releasing new music but they can rest assured that what they’ve given us so far shall endure for generations to come.