Sade - A Profile

Sade (Helen Folasade Adu) was born in Ibadan, Nigeria on 16 Jan 1959 so will therefore be celebrating her 64th birthday  today. She is one of the most successful British female singers in history even though she has only released six studio albums since 1984. In 2002 she was honoured by the Queen receiving an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) and in 2017 a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) which is only one step away from a knighthood were she would be referred to as Dame.

Sade was raised in Colchester (UK) by here grandparents reuniting with her mother when she was 11. At the age of 18 she moved to London to attend art school after which she launched a career as a fashion designer and model before joining a Latin soul band called Pride. 

In 1982 she formed a breakaway band Sade (initially named Folasade and then shortened) with former Pride members Paul Denman, Stuart Matthewman and Paul Anthony Cook (who was later replaced by Andrew Hale). They debuted at Ronnie Scott's Club in Dec 1982. Sade was initially signed to Epic Records in 1983 as a solo artist but the band joined her later and they released a debut album "Diamond Life" the same year which is the best selling debut album by a British female artist reaching #2 on the album chart and selling 1.2m copies in the UK alone and in excess of 4m in the US. It won a Brit Award for Best British album in 1985. Three albums followed "Promise" (1984) (which fared better on the chart reaching #1 for which the group won a Grammy for as Best New Artist) , "Stronger Than Pride" (1988) and "Love Deluxe" (1992) and then went on an eight year hiatus. The next album "Lovers Rock" appeared in 2000 followed by another break of ten years until the last album, to date (as it is rumoured that an new album is in the pipeline) "Soldier of Love" in 2010. Since then she has only released two songs, both for soundtracks.

Die-hard soul enthusiasts may not regard her as a bonafide 'soul' singer. The BBC describe her songwriting as "sufficiently soulful and jazzy yet poppy, funky yet easy listening, to appeal to fans of all those genres" [1]. However, her music seems to have certainly influenced a new generation of neo soul artists.

As always, rather than regurgitate all the tried and tested songs, the playlist below includes some of her lesser know songs, mainly album only tracks. Videos for all her singles are available on her YouTube Channel and to give you a taste we've included below videos for the first hit single "You're Love Is King" and also the 1993 single "Kiss Of Life" covered beautifully last year by Beth Griffith-Manley on Blair Bryant's "Red Tiger"  album.

Album Discography

All albums have gone Gold (500k sales) or Platinum (1m sales) with the first quadruple and second double Platinum.

1984 - Diamond Life

1985 - Promise

1988 - Stronger Than Pride

1992 - Love Deluxe

2000 - Lovers Rock

2002 - Lovers Live

2010 - Soldier of Love

2012 - Bring Me Home | Live 2011

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