Sade Adu‘s rich contro-alto voice and song writing skill first came to attention in 1983 with the song “Smooth Operator“. In song after song she captures the complexities of ego, hope, aspiration, and love. In Smooth Operator she describes a man who impresses woman after woman, never wasting a move, and yet ultimately has nothing to offer but love for sale.
In Your Love is King (1984) she describes quite a different lover, one whose love “touches the very part of me that is making my soul sing. I’m crying out for more. Your love is king…. This is no blind faith. This is no sad and sorry dream. This is no blind faith. Your love is real”. It is not entirely clear whether she is talking about a lover or following a tradition as old as the bible and using passionate love to portay an awareness of Love (cf. Hosea, Song of Songs) or whether she simply enjoys the ambiguity of a song that could be read either way. In 2008, the UK Daily Telegraph listed it as one of the 50 best love songs of the 1980′s.
King of Sorrow from the Lover’s Rock album (2000) explores the determination to continue despite feeling overwhelmed: “I’m crying everyone’s tears and there inside our private war I died the night before… I suppose I could just walk away. Will I disappoint my future if I stay? It’s just a day that brings it all about. Just another day and nothing’s any good. The DJ’s playing the same song, I have so much to do. I have to carry on. I wonder if this grief will ever let me go. I feel like I am the king of sorrow, yeah, the king of sorrow.
Soldier of Love , the title song of Sade’s latest album, is about not giving up on one’s capacity to love even when hurt and pain and confusion make it seem a distant reality:
I’ve lost the use of my heart, but I’m still alive,
Still looking for the life, the endless pool on the other side.
It’s a wild wild west, I’m doing my best,
I’m at the borderline, I’m at the hinterland of my devotion,
In the frontline of this battle of mine, But I’m still alive ….
I know that love will come, turn it all around.
I’m a soldier of love,
Every day and night, all the days of my life.
The Soldier of Love album was released this year (February 8, 2010). This is the first album to be released in 10 years. Despite this gap, Sade still has a loyal fanbase. Sade has chosen to be defiend by her songs rather than a media created public persona. Though she says her most recent album contains “quite a lot of my history“, she is deliberately reticent about the actual details, because she wants people to be focused on the way the song relates to her life and not to limit its meaning to her particular story.
In an interview Sade give to UK’s Sunday Times just before the release of Soldier of Love, we get a glimpse into a small part of Sade’s history. Sade told the Times that her parents loved each other deeply, but could not live together. Sade’s father is Nigerian and her mother British. Sade was born in Nigeria, but four months after Sade was born her mother took Sade and her older brother. The three returned to the UK, leaving her father behind in Nigeria. Periodically Sade’s parents considered getting back together but never did When her parents married, Sade’s father gave her mother a rose. 30 years later when he died, Sade’s mother took the preserved rose and threw it into the grave. Sade said that point she realized how deeply her mother had cared for her father. She had held onto the rose all that time. She traces the theme of unfulfilled love in many of her songs to her parents long lasting but never quite realized love.
