All the singers that Sade liked, they weren’t necessarily technically perfect, but you hear their life in their music. “We were all obsessed by soul, but we also loved imperfections. “Musically, we all had common ground, because we all loved classic soul records,” says Andrew Hale, who, like Denman and Matthewman, has been with Sade since 1983. Any simplicity belies its complexity, something the band share with Steve Winwood, Marvin Gaye, Michael Franks and all gold star soul music. To glide through Sade’s back catalogue is to travel through a landscape of ambience – muted saxophones here, treated acoustic guitars there – almost as though you can’t feel yourself, or the music, moving. 'All the singers that Sade liked, they weren’t necessarily technically perfect, but you hear their life in their music'
But as her reluctance to embrace any kind of celebrity would suggest – she is so reclusive that her friends nicknamed her Howie, after Howard Hughes – it’s never really been about optics. I was so engrossed in the process of reading.”įor years, the press would focus on Sade’s beauty – her “pellucid, pale-cocoa skin, a large, gently curved forehead, and wide-set eyes” was one atypical description – reasoning that her global citizen good looks were a principal reason for the group’s success. Whatever book I was reading, that would become my entire life. There was one kid who jumped out of the bushes once and insulted me, but I told my big brother, and the next day my brother jumped out at him. I used to read a lot back then as well, at least up until the age of fifteen. It’s more about society and culture and their parents. I think that children aren’t naturally racist at all. From the first day we moved into the house, I was making friends no one ever brought up my colour. When we moved back from Nigeria, we didn’t have anywhere to go, so first we lived with my grandparents. “It was abbreviated, so I could actually have been called Fola, which is quite a common prefix. “I was born in somewhere called Ibadan, and my true Nigerian name is Folasade, which means Crowning Glory,” she said. They remain one of the most successful British acts of the last four decades, having sold over 50 million records worldwide, with five of their six studio albums certified 3 X Platinum in the US. Diamond Life would go on to sell over ten million copies. That’s the audience I’ve always aimed for.”Īnd she got it. “They’d attracted kids, mothers with children, old people, white, black. “I was more fascinated by the audience,” she said. As a teenager she saw The Jackson 5 at the Rainbow Theatre in London’s Finsbury Park, where she was working as a barmaid.
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