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Adrian Wan

Having released only six albums in 25 years,  British singer  Sade is far from prolific, but she's always been faithful to her style.
She has always been  admired for this integrity, as was apparent following the  release of her new album Soldier of Love, which shot to the top of the charts  with more than half a million copies selling within a month.
'I only make records when I feel I have something to say. I'm not interested in releasing music just for the sake of selling something. Sade is not a brand,' she said.
But such commitment does not mean stubbornly rehashing older creations. On the contrary, it means making music that follows musical principles with a supple mind.
Soldier of Love is full of songs that show the original and innovative side of the singer. 
'I never want to repeat myself,' Sade says. 'And that becomes a more interesting challenge for the band the longer we carry on together.'
Sade, whose real name is Helen Folasade Adu,  was born in Ibadan, Nigeria. Her father was Nigerian, a university economics lecturer; her mother Anne was an English nurse. Her parents moved to Nigeria soon after getting married, and when their daughter was born, called her by a short form  of Folasade: and so Sade was born.
She moved back to Essex in England with her mother and older brother when her parents separated.
As a teenager, she saw the Jackson 5 at the Rainbow theatre in Finsbury Park in London, where she worked behind the bar at weekends. 
'I was more fascinated by the audience than by anything that was going on the stage,' she recalls. 'They'd attracted kids, mothers with children, old people, white, black. I was really moved. That's the audience I've always aimed for.'
But music was not her first choice as a career. She studied fashion at St Martin's School of Art and only began singing after two old school friends with a fledgling group approached her to help them out with the vocals.
She spent two years overcoming her stage fright and was regularly singing back up with a North London Latin funk band called Pride. 'I was terrified. But I was determined to try my best, and I decided that if I was going to sing, I would sing the way I speak, because it's important to be yourself.'
Sade served a long apprenticeship on the road with Pride. For three years from 1981, she and the other seven members of the band toured the Britain. 
One of their most popular songs was Smooth Operator, which Sade had co-written, and it attracted the attention of record company talent scouts. Soon, everybody wanted to sign her, but not the rest of Pride. Loyal to her band members, Sade refused to go her own way.
Eighteen months later she relented and signed with a record label - on condition that she took with her three band mates:  saxophonist Stuart Matthewman,  keyboard player Andrew Hale,  and bassist Paul Denman,  who are still with her.
The  laidback, understated elegance of her music, in conjunction with her  subtly exotic and effortlessly sophisticated look launched Sade as the female face of the decade. Magazines queued to put her on the cover. 
'It wasn't marketing,' she says. 'It was just me. I wasn't trying to promote an image.'
Sade toured constantly in the 1980s, something she did as a matter of principle. 'If you just do TV or video, then you become a tool of the record industry. All you're doing is selling a product. It's when I get on stage with the band and we play that I know that people love the music. I can feel it. 
'Sometimes I yearn to be on the road,' she adds. 'The feeling overwhelms me.'
The band is now touring for the first time since 2001. And if the response of audiences on television shows such as The Today Show and The Late Show with David Letterman are anything to go by, Sade and her band have lost nothing of their musical panache.




Sade still a smooth  operator