Where did the soul singer go in her golden career, hated by the star system?

“I only record records when I feel like I have something to say. I'm not interested in releasing music just to sell copies. “Sade is not a commercial slogan.” These words belong to the British singer Sade, the most exciting artist of the 80s.

Sade was born on this day in 1959, and to this day she remains a world-class singer of world music.

The publicity, the interviews, the photo shoots and the whole star system were never her concern, one could say she didn't like them. In the end, none of this was necessary.

In the early years the band prevailed

Helen Folasade Addo was born in Ibadan, Nigeria. Her father, a Nigerian, was a professor of economics at the university. Her mother is an English nurse. The couple met in London while he was studying at the London School of Economics and moved to Nigeria shortly after the wedding.

When their daughter was born, no one called her by her English name, but by the short form Volosad, and so Sade remained the most sonorous. At the age of four, her parents divorced and her mother returned with Sade and her older brother Bunge to England.

Image source: APE-MPE

Sade grew up listening to American soul music. As a teenager, she saw the Jackson Five concert at the Rainbow Theater in Finsbury Park, London, where she worked behind the bar on weekends. “I was fascinated by the audience more than anything happening on stage. They were white, black and many families with children. I was very impressed. I told myself that I would also like such an audience.”

Music was not her first choice as a career. She studied fashion at St Martin's School of Art in London and began singing to temporarily serve a group of friends. That group was Pride. In 1982, she took some Pride members and formed SADE, a group bearing her name.

In 1984, the band's first album, “Diamond Life,” was released. With “Smooth Operator”, “Your Love is King” and “Why Can't We Live Together” Sade and her band achieved international success.

Sade's first single, “Your Love Is King”, became a number one hit in the UK in February 1984, and with it, her life and the life of the band changed radically. The simple elegance of the music combined with her look – extraordinarily exotic and effortlessly sophisticated – made her a role model.

Magazines lined up to put her on the cover. “It wasn't marketing,” you say. “It was just me. I wasn't trying to promote an image.”

At the time of the release of her debut album, Diamond Life, in 1984, Sade's life was nothing like a fairytale. She lived in a converted fire station in north London with her then-boyfriend Robert Elms. There was no heating, which meant she had to sleep dressed, while the bathroom was in the kitchen.

Throughout the 1980s, until his first three albums sold millions around the world, Sade never stopped touring.

“If you're just doing TV or video, you become a tool for the record industry. All you're doing is selling the product. When I get on stage with the band and we're playing, I know people love the music. I can feel it. Sometimes I miss being on the road “I was overcome with emotion,” he asserted forcefully.

In 1985 he released the album “Promise”, which included tracks such as “Is It a Crime” and the rousing “Jezebel”. Three years later came “Stronger Than Pride” with also great hits and in 1992 “Love Delux”. It included what would become Sade's biggest hit, the masterpiece “No Ordinary Love.”

After the birth of her child a short break followed. It was time to devote herself to motherhood.

In 1986, he starred in the movie “Absolute Beginners” and in 2000 he released “Lovers Rock.” She switched to a pop sound and won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album.

In 2002, she was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire. In 2010, the group released the song “Soldier of Love” and again received a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal. This is also the last recorded (official) work.

In 2018, he made the soundtrack “Flower of the Universe” for the 2018 Disney film “A Wrinkle in Time,” and a few months later he will release the song “The Big Unknown” for the film “Widows.” She will say that she agreed to write it because she felt that the series on which the film was based represented her.

Long musical breaks that legend has grown

Sade took long musical breaks in her life to focus on her personal life, which is why her works have been so rare over the past 20 years.

She said in one of her interviews: “When important things happen in my life, I cannot turn off the switch and say: Now it is time to record a new record.”

Image source: APE-MPE

It would take an eight-year hiatus until 2000 when Lovers Rock was released. His next break will be longer, as it will take ten years before he returns. In 2010, the film “Soldier of Love” was released, which to this day remains her last work, with which the great soul explorer will make an amazing comeback. Half the songs on the album, perhaps more, would become hits while the 2011 Sade Live tour was permanently sold out.

Then the singer, by her own decision, stays out of the public eye again to “live like a normal person.” As of 2005, she had bought a farm in Gloucestershire, southwest England, and lived there with her partner, a Royal Navy officer, and his son.

He does not appear in public, speaks very rarely and lives as he chooses. There are times when she finds happy moments on Instagram in photos of her only transgender son, Isaac, the biological child she had with Jamaican producer Bob Morgan.

Despite strong rumors of a life of drugs and addiction, Sade actually isolates herself whenever she feels like it. “You can only grow as an artist if you allow yourself time to grow as a person,” he says.

Today, Sade is considered Britain's most successful solo musician. In America they love it, especially rappers. From Jay Z and Kanye West to Snoop Dogg and Nicki Minaj.

These long musical interludes and the “mystery” that surrounded them built her legend over the years. “All this time she lives in luxurious silence and grows her legend,” the New York Times would write about her.

In August 2023, Sade appeared in British Vogue's feature “Life in Quarantine” which she said she spent with her mother, partner Ian Watts, and her godmother.

Everything that is circulated is a fact in itself. He only returns to music when he feels he has something to say…