Sade (singer)

• 1. Introduction

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  Sade is the professional name of Helen Folasade Adu, a Nigerian-British singer-songwriter. When her new band played its first show at Heaven, a London nightclub, 1,000 people were turned away at the door. The group was brand new, and the crowd had come largely for her. Her name now belongs to both the woman and the band, which has made six studio albums. Few artists so famous leave such long gaps between records. This documentary follows how a fashion student built a catalogue that sells in the millions. It asks why her cool, restrained sound took hold on both sides of the Atlantic. It asks what her long silences meant for her career. It also asks why so many rappers keep naming her as a favourite.

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• 2. Between Two Countries

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  Folasade, the middle name of the girl born on the 16th of January 1959, means crowned with wealth in Yoruba. She was born in Ibadan, a city in colonial Nigeria that now sits within Oyo State. Her father, Adebisi Adu, was a lecturer in economics from a Yoruba family in Ikere-Ekiti. Her mother, Anne Hayes, was an English district nurse. The two met in London, married in 1955 and moved to Nigeria some time afterwards.

  The marriage did not last. When Sade was four, her parents separated, and Hayes took Sade and her elder brother, Banji Adu, back to England. They lived with their maternal grandparents near Colchester, Essex. At age 11, Sade moved with her mother and brother to Holland-on-Sea.

  She finished her schooling at Clacton County High School and Colchester Institute. At 18 she left for London to study fashion design at Saint Martin's School of Art. The course took three years, and a short spell of modelling followed.

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• 3. From Pride to Diamond Life

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  Pride, a British band, was where Sade first sang for an audience, starting out as a backup vocalist. Its guitarist and saxophonist, Stuart Matthewman, became her songwriting partner. Backed by Pride's rhythm section, the two began playing their own sets during Pride's gigs. Her solo performances of "Smooth Operator", a song co-written with Ray St. John, caught the attention of record companies.

  In 1983, Sade and Matthewman left Pride together with keyboardist Andrew Hale, bassist Paul Denman and drummer Paul Cook. That group became the Sade band. In May 1983 they played their first US show, at the Danceteria nightclub in New York City. On the 18th of October 1983, Adu signed with Epic Records, and the rest of the band signed the following year.

  Diamond Life took only six weeks to record, all of it at The Power Plant in London. It was released on the 16th of July 1984. In the UK it reached number two, won the Brit Award for Best British Album in 1985 and sold over 1.2 million copies. Abroad it hit number one in several countries and the top ten in the US, where it sold more than four million copies. Worldwide sales passed six million. That made it one of the top-selling debuts of the 1980s and the best-selling debut by a British female vocalist or female-fronted group.

  The lead single, "Your Love Is King", came out on the 25th of February 1984. It reached number six on the UK singles chart and number seven in Ireland, but only number 54 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The third single, "Smooth Operator", followed on the 15th of September 1984 and went furthest in America. It peaked at number five on the Hot 100 and on the Hot Black Singles chart, and at number one on the Adult Contemporary chart. In the UK it stopped at number 19, though it reached the top 20 in Austria, Switzerland, France and West Germany. The second album would arrive in late 1985.

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• 4. The Chart Run

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  In July 1985, Sade appeared at the Live Aid charity concert at Wembley Stadium. That November the band released Promise, which reached number one in both the UK and the US. In America it was the band's first album to top the Billboard 200, reaching the peak in 1986 and staying for two weeks. US sales reached four million, and the Recording Industry Association of America certified it four times platinum.

  Two singles came from the album, "Never as Good as the First Time" and "The Sweetest Taboo". The latter led the album, spent six months on the Hot 100 and peaked at number five. It also reached number one on the adult contemporary chart and number three on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks chart. The band's popularity was so strong that some radio stations revived the 1970s habit of playing album tracks. Those stations added "Is It a Crime" and "Tar Baby" to their playlists.

  Absolute Beginners was the film in which Sade made her acting debut in 1986. It was adapted from a Colin MacInnes book about London life in the late 1950s. She played Athene Duncannon and lent her voice to the soundtrack. The film screened out of competition at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival and grossed £1.8 million in the UK.

  Stronger Than Pride came out on the 3rd of May 1988 and was certified three times platinum in the US. Four singles came from it. The second, "Paradise", reached number 16 on the Hot 100 and number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, the band's first single to do so.

  Love Deluxe arrived on the 26th of October 1992 and peaked at number three on the Billboard 200. It sold 3.4 million copies in the US and was certified four times platinum for shipments of four million. It reached number one in France and the top ten in New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, where it went gold. In November 1994, The Best of Sade, the band's first compilation, reached the top ten in both the UK and the US. It went platinum in the UK and four times platinum in the US. Alongside earlier material, it carried a cover of Percy Mayfield's "Please Send Me Someone to Love", first recorded in 1950. The next studio album was eight years away.

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• 5. Lovers Rock Returns

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  Lovers Rock reached shops on the 13th of November 2000 and drew positive reviews. It moved away from the jazz-inspired sound of the earlier records. The album reached number 18 in the UK and number three on the Billboard 200, and the RIAA certified it triple platinum. By February 2010 its US sales stood at 3.9 million. On the 27th of February 2002 it won Sade the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album. Its lead single, "By Your Side", earned a 2002 Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance but lost to Nelly Furtado's "I'm Like a Bird". VH1 later ranked "By Your Side" the 48th greatest love song of all time.

  In April 2001, the band's website announced the Lovers Rock Tour, planned as 30 shows beginning in the summer. The first dates moved because the band wanted extra rehearsal time. Demand was strong, and many stops added extra shows. In August 2001 the tour was extended by eight weeks. Critics widely called it a comeback, since it marked the band's first performances since 1994. Many expected the tour to reach other countries, but it never did. With more than 40 shows, it ranked as the 13th biggest tour in North America and earned over $26 million.

  Lovers Live, the band's first live album, came out on the 5th of February 2002 on Epic Records. It reached number ten on the Billboard 200 but only number 51 in the UK, the band's first album to miss the UK top twenty. The RIAA certified it gold on the 7th of March 2002, at US sales of 562,000 copies. The DVD went platinum on the 30th of January 2003 for shipping 100,000 copies.

  Red Hot + Riot, a 2002 album from the Red Hot Organization, paid tribute to the music of Fela Kuti. Sade recorded a remix of "By Your Side" for it and was billed as a co-producer. After that she took a ten-year break, during which she raised her child.

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• 6. Soldier of Love and After

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  Soldier of Love was released worldwide on the 8th of February 2010 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. First-week sales reached 502,000 copies. It was the band's first album to debut at number one and its second to peak there. It also had the best sales week by a group since AC/DC's Black Ice entered the chart at number one in November 2008. Promise and Soldier of Love were separated by 24 years, 10 months and 2 weeks. That made Sade the act with the longest time between number-one albums.

  The title track premiered on US radio on the 8th of December 2009 and was released digitally on the 11th of January 2010. Two more singles followed, "Babyfather" and "The Moon and the Sky". US urban adult contemporary radio played them on the 13th of April and the 24th of August 2010. At the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards in 2011, the title track won Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. "Babyfather" was nominated for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

  In April 2011, the band began the Sade Live tour, also called the Once in a Lifetime Tour or the Soldier of Love Tour. It visited Europe, the Americas, Australia and Asia, and promoted a second compilation, The Ultimate Collection (2011). It was the band's first tour in nearly a decade. At mid-year it ranked 27th on Pollstar's Top 50 Worldwide Tour list, with over 20 million dollars earned. By the end of 2011 it placed tenth on Billboard's annual Top 25 Tours, earning over $50 million from 59 shows. The tour was chronicled in Bring Me Home - Live 2011, released in May 2012.

  In March 2018, the reunited band released the acoustic ballad "Flower of the Universe" for the Disney film A Wrinkle in Time. Director Ava DuVernay recalled asking Sade to contribute, saying "I never thought she'd say yes, but asked anyway." Later that year came "The Big Unknown", written for the 20th Century Fox film Widows. Its director, Steve McQueen, said Sade agreed because "the original series of Widows had deeply resonated with her."

  For a couple of weeks in 2022, the band worked at Miraval Studios in France. It was their first visit since recording parts of Promise and Stronger Than Pride there. A successor to Soldier of Love is rumoured to be in progress.

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• 7. The Voice and Its Admirers

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  The New Yorker called Sade's voice a "grainy contralto full of air". It added that the voice "betrays a slight ache but no agony" and "values even imperfect dignity over a show of pain." The magazine found the quality "deeply English", which makes the voice hard to categorise. The BBC described it as "husky and restrained" and compared it to Billie Holiday. The same outlet praised the songwriting as "sufficiently soulful and jazzy yet poppy, funky yet easy listening, to appeal to fans of all those genres."

  The New Yorker wrote that Sade and her bandmates "created one of the most profitable catalogues in pop". It described songs "exploring the heavier lifting inside love: commitment, consistency, friendship." Her success has also been put down to her beauty, her seemingly indefinable origins and her mysterious persona. In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked her No. 51 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.

  Rakim, of Eric B. & Rakim, said he grew up listening to her music and was influenced by her voice and style. He referred to "Smooth Operator" in his 1988 song "Microphone Fiend". Talib Kweli said he learned about precision from watching her perform Love Deluxe in its entirety at Madison Square Garden. Missy Elliott named Sade's performance of "Smooth Operator" as a favourite. Souls of Mischief, Tanya Morgan and the Clipse duo of Malice and Pusha have also spoken of their admiration.

  Kanye West reacted to the release of Soldier of Love in writing. He wrote: "This is why i still have a blog." He went on: "To be a part of moments like this... new Sade... How much better this... than everything else?" Rick Ross told an interviewer: "People may know my infatuation with Sade. There's never been a bad Sade track. I love all different sides."

  The late singer Aaliyah said 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." Brandy has cited Sade as a major vocal influence. Heavy metal singers Greg Puciato and Chino Moreno have named her as an inspiration. Ernest Greene of Washed Out has said her music and fashion sense inspire him.

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• 8. Private Life and Honours

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  Robert Elms was Sade's boyfriend when she squatted in Tottenham in the 1980s. In 1989 she married Carlos Pliego, a Spanish film director, and the marriage ended in 1995. In the late 1990s she moved briefly to Jamaica to live with Bob Morgan, a Jamaican music producer. She gave birth to her first child on the 21st of July 1996, which is why the band paused that year. That child later sang on "Babyfather" in 2010. Sade and Morgan separated. Since 2007 she has been in a relationship with Ian Watts, a former Royal Marine, and through him she has a stepson.

  On National Coming Out Day in 2016, her child Izaak Theo Adu came out as a transgender man. In September 2019, Izaak posted a message online thanking his mother for her support through his transition. In late 2024, Sade and the Red Hot Organization's TRAИƧA project released "Young Lion", a song dedicated to her son.

  In 2005, Sade moved to a village near Stroud, Gloucestershire, where she bought a run-down cottage to renovate. She kept a Georgian house in North London for business meetings. She rarely gives interviews.

  She made a rare public appearance at Buckingham Palace when she was invested as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2002, for services to music. She called the award "a great gesture to me and all black women in England". In the 2017 Birthday Honours she was promoted to Commander of the same Order. In 1986 she became the first Nigerian-born artist to win a Grammy Award, taking Best New Artist. In 2023 she was invited to join the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Her nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame came in 2024, and she was elected in 2026 alongside her bandmates.

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