Sade Adu rarely gives interviews, releases albums years apart and avoids celebrity life. Her records still sell.
She was born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria, on 16 January 1959. Her father, Bisi Adu, was a Nigerian economics lecturer; her mother, Anne Hayes, an English nurse. When her parents separated, she moved to England with her mother as a small child and grew up in Essex.
Fashion first
Sade studied fashion design at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London and worked briefly in fashion. She started singing backing vocals with a Latin funk band called Pride almost by chance, and in the early 1980s formed a new group with musicians Stuart Matthewman, Andrew Hale and Paul Denman. The band took her name, Sade.
Unusually for pop, the line-up has barely changed since the 1980s. Matthewman, Hale and Denman are still her bandmates, and the group has always insisted that Sade is the name of a band, not a solo act.
Diamond Life
Their debut album, Diamond Life, was released in 1984. It included “Your Love Is King” and “Smooth Operator”, smooth, jazzy songs that stood out against the synthesiser pop of the time. The album was a worldwide success, and in 1986 Sade won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
The catalogue
Later albums included Promise, with “The Sweetest Taboo”, and Love Deluxe in 1992, with “No Ordinary Love” and “Kiss of Life”. Lovers Rock followed in 2000, with “By Your Side”. Soldier of Love, released in 2010 after a decade-long gap, topped the US Billboard 200. The band has won several Grammy Awards.
The Nigerian connection
Sade’s Yoruba name, Folasade, means “honour confers a crown”. Nigerian fans claim her proudly as one of their own, and her songs are staples of Lagos radio and quiet-storm playlists.
Privacy
Sade has lived largely out of the public eye, raising her family in the English countryside. The long gaps between albums have become part of her legend. Fans wait, and when new music comes, they buy it.
Honours
She was appointed OBE in 2002 and CBE in 2017 for services to music.
Influence
Artists from Beyoncé to Drake have cited or sampled Sade. Her calm, sensual style influenced generations of R&B and neo-soul singers.
She built one of pop’s most enduring careers by doing almost none of the things pop stars are told to do. The music has always been enough.
