100 Best Albums
- 26 OCT 1992
- 9 Songs
- Diamond Life · 1984
- Lovers Rock · 2000
- Love Deluxe · 1992
- Love Deluxe · 1992
- Love Deluxe · 1992
- Diamond Life · 1984
- The Best of Sade · 1985
- Diamond Life · 1984
- Love Deluxe · 1992
- The Best of Sade · 1988
Essential Albums
- 100 Best Albums Sade’s revelatory fourth album, Love Deluxe is an exercise in pure immersion; the air and textures so thick and inky, the mere act of listening to it feels like slowly swimming through a body of water. From the opening bassline of the immortal opening track “No Ordinary Love”, Love Deluxe’s gravitational pull is apparent and immediate, and its nine songs represent rich-sounding music that, in less capable hands, would risk becoming totally overwhelming. But the members of this British quartet, led by the incomparable Sade Adu, is as locked in with precision on Love Deluxe as they were throughout their early years; the resulting album, released in 1992, is a record that radiates with iridescent beauty even when it sounds massive and heavy. The weight that Love Deluxe carries seemingly created a crater around the band itself, as Sade underwent the first of multiple extended hiatuses not long after its release—affording listeners plenty of time to fully meld with the album’s gorgeous, endless-seeming tendrils of sound. Just as Sade’s smash debut Diamond Life arrived at the peak of quiet storm’s popularity in the mid-1980s, the slinky dub and drum machines of Love Deluxe coincided with trip-hop’s emergence in the early 1990s, sharing ostensible shelf space and musical DNA with Massive Attack’s monumental 1991 debut Blue Lines. Whereas trip-hop is regularly associated with haze and obfuscation, however, Sade sound as clear as ever on Love Deluxe, from the gentle-yet-cavernous “I Couldn’t Love You More”, which plumbs seemingly impossible levels of lushness, to the closing instrumental “Mermaid”, which recalls the Twin Peaks theme. Adu has fittingly described Love Deluxe as a reflection of a search for the unattainable. “The idea is that it’s one of the few luxury things that you can’t buy,” she told one interviewer. “You can buy any kind of love, but you can’t get love deluxe.”
- Released in 1984, Sade’s Diamond Life is one of the most fully realised debut albums of the last 40 years—an influential worldwide smash whose influence continues to ripple through popular music today. The album’s nine songs—eight originals, plus a brooding cover of R&B singer Timmy Thomas’ 1973 hit “Why Can’t We Live Together”—seemingly hover in the space they occupy, like light glimmering off of a city street late at night after fresh rain. Arriving smack dab in the middle of the 1980s, Diamond Life’s release came just as “quiet storm” R&B became a dominant force on Black radio stations in the US—and the music of this British quartet, led by Sade Adu, would come to define the genre for a multitude of listeners. But Diamond Life is by no means a record situated in time; the music sounds and feels eternal, far beyond the ways in which its DNA has been incorporated into modern-day neo-soul and R&B. Recorded over the course of six weeks in London’s legendary Power Plant Studios, Diamond Life—and Sade as an entity—was born out of Adu’s previous gig as a backup singer for the band Pride. She formed a songwriting partnership with Stuart Matthewman, the band’s guitarist and saxophonist; the duo would eventually team with Pride members Paul Denman (bass) and Paul Anthony Cooke (drums) to break off and form Sade. The group’s catalogue as a whole is often associated with romance and sensuality, but the songs on Diamond Life often bear the mark of hardship and uncertainty: The smouldering “Sally” is a tribute of sorts to the open charity of the Salvation Army, while the bold and cautiously optimistic “When Am I Going to Make a Living” was inspired by Adu not being able to pay a dry-cleaning ticket. But the cool-handed interplay Sade showcase on Diamond Life betrayed their status as a relatively new group, featuring a sound so natural, it feels as though the members had been playing for decades already. The word “timeless” has never felt so deeply earned.
Albums
- 2000
- 1992
- 1984
Artist Playlists
- Fall in love with the smooth sounds of this enigmatic artist.
- Taking cues from the original smooth soul operators.
- Grab the mic and sing along with some of their biggest hits.
Singles & EPs
Live Albums
Compilations
Appears On
- DJ Get Bizzy & Reso Bankroll
More To Hear
- Celebrating four decades of an absolute classic.
- Nonstop grooves that hook you from the very first note.
- ALL WOMEN EVERYTHING.
- ALL WOMEN EVERYTHING.
- The Texan goes deep on his third album This Land.
- More seasonal sounds with The Midnight Hour, Sade, and Outkast.
About Sade
Over the course of Sade’s decades-long career, the soulful singer has managed to explore every aspect of relationships—from meet-cutes to makeouts to bittersweet breakups. Born Helen Folasade Adu, in Ibadan, Nigeria in 1959, the future pop star was raised in Essex, England, and studied art and fashion at London’s Central Saint Martins. She launched her music career in the early ’80s as a backup singer in a jazz-funk band called Pride. She quickly moved to the front of the group, before leaving to form her own eponymous outfit and releasing its first single, “Your Love Is King”, in February of 1984. Sade’s debut album, Diamond Life followed in July, led by the low-key heartbreaker “Smooth Operator”. The combination of Sade’s velvety, breathy voice, chill R&B beats and signature look of slicked-back hair, gold hoops, and red lips were instantly iconic. Through albums like 1985’s Promise, 1992’s Love Deluxe, 2000’s Lovers Rock and 2010’s Soldier of Love, Sade’s music blended R&B, jazz, soul, funk, and Afro-Caribbean sounds, but never detracted from her singularly smooth voice. Sade releases music at her own pace, taking years-long breaks to focus on personal matters before returning to the spotlight. In 2018, she returned from an eight-year hiatus to contribute “Flower of the Universe” to the soundtrack for Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time. Despite her occasional absences, Sade’s look and sound remain widely influential—Kanye West has been spotted in her band’s t-shirt, Drake has two tattoos of her face on his torso, and artists ranging from The xx to Solange have introduced a new generation of cool kids to her guiding sound.
- FROM
- Essex, England
- FORMED
- 1982
- GENRE
- R&B/Soul