Deb mentioned Sade in her comment last week so I found my copies of The Best of Sade (1994) and Sade Lovers Live (2004) and listened to them again. “Sade is a Nigerian-born British singer, known as the lead vocalist of her band Sade. The band released the album Diamond Life, which became one of the era’s best-selling albums and the best-selling debut by a British female vocalist. The band released their third album (Stronger Than Pride) in 1988, and a fourth album (Love Deluxe) in 1992. The band went on hiatus in 1996 after the birth of Sade’s child.
After eight years without an album, the band reunited in 1999 and released Lovers Rock in 2000. The album departed from the jazz-inspired inflections of their previous work, featuring mellower sounds and pop compositions. The band produced no more music until the release of Soldier of Love, ten years later. Since then, they have released two songs, “Flower of the Universe” for the soundtrack of Disney‘s A Wrinkle in Time, and “The Big Unknown“, part of the soundtrack of Steve McQueen‘s film Widows.”
I played “Smooth Operator” constantly when I first heard it. The same with “The Sweetest Taboo,” and “Hang On To Your Love.” Great music by a great artist. Are you a Sade fan? Do you have a favorite song? GRADE: A (for both)
TRACK LIST:
| Your Love Is King | 3:41 | ||
| Hang On To Your Love | 4:29 | ||
| Smooth Operator | 4:16 | ||
| Jezebel | 5:23 | ||
| The Sweetest Taboo | 4:25 | ||
| Is It A Crime | 6:16 | ||
| Never As Good As The First Time | 3:58 | ||
| Love Is Stronger Than Pride | 4:17 | ||
| Paradise | 3:36 | ||
| Nothing Can Come Between Us | 3:52 | ||
| No Ordinary Love | 7:19 | ||
| Like A Tattoo | 3:36 | ||
| Kiss Of Life | 4:10 | ||
| Please Send Me Someone To Love | 3:40 | ||
| Cherish The Day | 6:17 | ||
| Pearls | 4:35 |
TRACK LIST:
| A1 | Cherish The Day | |
| A2 | Somebody Already Broke My Heart | |
| A3 | Smooth Operator | |
| A4 | Jezebel | |
| A5 | Kiss of Life | |
| A6 | Slave Song | |
| A7 | The Sweetest Gift | |
| B1 | The Sweetest Taboo | |
| B2 | Paradise | |
| B3 | No Ordinary Love | |
| B4 | By Your Side | |
| B5 | Flow | |
| B6 | Is It A Crime |
I like almost all of the songs here, but my favorites are “Kiss of Life”, “Is It A Crime?”, and “No Ordinary Love”. I love Sade’s big, almost raspy voice and the sax-heavy musical breaks. So good!
Deb, I bought all of Sade’s albums when they came out and played them constantly. Now I have her CDs in my rotation because of those sax-heavy songs and her distinctive voice. So good, indeed!
Smooth Operator is the only song of hers I really remember. But her voice was distinctive.
Patti, you know immediately Sade is singing the song you’re listening to!
Smooth Operator is the only song i know by her and i don’y find it interesting. so i never followed up onanything else by her.
Steve, Sade is a Horatio Alger story of an immigrant who had nothing and becomes a world-wide success.
Ms. Adu was, and probably remains, not only the possessor of a lovely voice (and a striking look) but it’s how she uses her voice, what musicians call “attack” and her phrasing…one of the better jazz singers of her generation, probably the best I heard frequently doing jazz-pop. The efflorescence of pop-fusion in the early ’80s (after the more obvious progenitors such as the Zombies, the Byrds, Steely Dan, the Jimi Hendryx Experience, Soft Machine and War, as well as more “purely” fusion bands such as Return to Forever on one side and the likes of Blood, Sweat & Tears, the Doobie Brothers and the Ides of March on the other) didn’t hurt my feelings, any more than the influx of ska revivialists and those influenced by them. The Police and offshoots, the ’80s King Crimson, Joe Jackson in certain moods, and the band Sade, with Helen Adu out front. “Smooth Operator” remains a great song, but it’s hardly the only one on the first album, nor in the first four…I’ll have to try the pop album.
Smooth Operator and Is It a Crime?
Jeff, no fault, no foul.
Like others, my knowledge of her begins and ends with Smooth Operator! She mispronounces her name, too!
Bob, I think you might be confusing Sade (pronounced “Shar-day” and the Marquis de Sade.
Well, that guy called himself “sod”, and seems like he was pretty sodden. Helen Folasade Adu, CBE, probably outranks him these years, and is in much better shape.
Todd, I have to agree with you on Helen Folasade Adu’s much better shape.
Nope! I know Sadie/Sade from a sadist!
One wonders how Folasade was transliterated thus. Seems almost Portuguese in its cheerful variation on how other languages (even the neighbors’) use their vowels and consonants.
Comment got moderated!
Todd, WORDPRESS is being cranky again. Sorry for the idiotic moderation it afflicted on you!