Sade Beyond Sade
A playlist to find out where the Sade sound wanders when Sade, one of pop music's greatest mystery acts, goes silent.
There’s a comforting pattern in the liner notes of Sade’s entire discography. Over a twenty-six-year span, from Diamond Life in 1984 to Soldier of Love in 2010, and possibly until a future seventh album—whispered about but still unannounced—the lineup of the British band remains the same. “Sade are”, the credits read, with a quiet emphasis on plural: Sade Adu on vocals, Paul Spencer Denman on bass, Andrew Hale on keyboards, Stuart Matthewman on guitars and sax. The lead singer and songwriter, who became a defining pop image of the late twentieth century through uncompromising art direction, is always alone on cover arts, but inside photography acts as a corrective. Her bandmates are represented in displays of studio camaraderie or pensive portraits, signalling a unity that extends to some of the group’s closest collaborators.
This sense of fidelity sheds light on Sade’s unique aura. A model of consistency in a chaotic world, Sade is proof that fame and time don’t always break bonds. After a productive run in the nineteen-eighties, the band became the Halley’s Comet of popular music: their last three albums appeared, like clockwork, in 1992, 2000 and 2010, each with a supporting tour, each followed by an immediate retreat from the spotlight. Yet, despite the distance, talks of separation or retirement wouldn’t really make sense. This side of U2, it seems that no other band in modern pop has made it this far in its original form. This is Sade, so Sade was and Sade will be.
Describing the Sade sound is a tricky exercise, and a collage of labels doesn’t do the group any justice. Yes, Sade contains R&B’s history of romance and struggle, the congas of latin jazz, touches of London-flavored reggae, and the studio slickness of eighties pop. But any attempt at labelling the group sounds incomplete (in their review of Soldier of Love, Pitchfork used the term “soft-rock”, and it just doesn’t feel right). All of these definitions are challenged and transcended by Sade Adu’s vital presence. Her voice, her songwriting, her mystery, and the group’s natural chemistry with and around her makes Sade a unique idea, both elusive and stainless. Sade is the artist, Sade is the band, and Sade is the genre.
I was curious to find out what happens of Sade when the band recedes from public view, and what the three male group members—relatively anonymous figures in a world-famous group often mistaken as a solo artist—do of their free time during the long stretches that separate each Sade album. This search was also a way to find out if the self-contained Sade sound, so specific and so hard to pinpoint, could ever escape the lamp. So I made a little playlist.
On purpose, I focused on songs that hint at the group’s signature sounds. Admittedly, this approach doesn’t give enough credit to the band’s versatility, but my goal was to find glimpses of Sade outside of Sade. The playlist is bookended by two of the most Sade-esque records made without Sade Adu: one is Sweetback, the side project of the Hale-Matthewman-Denman trio, the other is the 1996 smash debut of neo-soul pioneer Maxwell, Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite. This album marked the beginning of a long collaboration between Maxwell and Stuart Matthewman, who is the most productive members of Sade and their most recognisable ambassador. His tenor saxophone was the defining ingredient of Sade’s first albums. Out of this context, the instrument works both as a nostalgic callback and an extension of the band spirit.
The greatest surprise is that Sade herself—if Discogs’ deep record is to be trusted—has rarely, if ever ventured out of the group. After 1984, and the multi-platinum success of Diamond Life, the songwriter didn’t appear anywhere but on Sade albums. No guest spot, no backing vocals, no high-profile duet, nothing. The exceptions are three appearances on soundtrack albums: Philadelphia in 1993, and the back-to-back contributions to A Wrinkle in Time and Widows in 2018, a surprising rush that seemed to tease a return. That third song may be the only, fully-formed Sade song not to feature any of the three male members of the group. It’s a rare outlier, yet its title, like so many other great Sade titles—think Smooth Operator, Lovers Rock, Bullet Proof Soul— better captures the band’s untraceable force that any rational description. It is called “The Big Unknown”.
For the cover of the playlist, I borrowed a terrific portrait of Sade, shot by Matthew Rolston sometime in the nineteen-eighties. It’s a black-and-white photo of the artist, stunning as ever, and casting the shadow of Stuart Matthewman in a classic sax player pose. That image is a very truthful representation of Sade, both as a pop icon and a concept. It says everything about the group’s discretion, their organic chemistry and the sheer impossibility to separate Sade as a singer from Sade as a creative system. In the playlist, the songs seem to echo the Rolston image by reversing it: Sade’s silhouette is drawn in negative by the unmistakable charm of this saxophone, the confident groove of that bass and the evocative power of these infinite keyboards. And Sade, more than ever, is felt through her absence.
Listen to Sade Beyond Sade on Spotify and Tidal.
Track Listing
01 / Sweetback - Gaze (1996)
Bass by Paul Spencer Denman
Guitar and saxophone by Stuart Matthewman
Keyboards by Andrew Hale
02 / Twin Danger - Coldest Kind Of Heart (2015)
Production and saxophone by Stuart Matthewman
03 / Olu - Sista Why (2000)
Production and arrangement by Stuart Matthewman
04 / Corinne Bailey Rae - Emeraldine (2006)
Production, songwriting and keyboards by Andrew Hale
05 / Johnson - Eased (1998)
Production and keyboards by Andrew Hale
06 / Paloma Faith - It’s the Not Knowing (2014)
Production, songwriting and engineering by Stuart Matthewman
07 / Rick Braun - Love Will Find a Way (1996)
Bass by Paul Spencer Denman
08 / Ivana Santilli - Golden Sea (2004)
Production, guitar and more by Stuart Matthewman
09 / Fun Lovin’ Criminals - Up on the Hill (1998)
Saxophone by Stuart Matthewman
10 / Young MC - I Come Off (Southern Comfort Mix) (1990)
Keyboards by Andrew Hale
11 / Water Melon - Moon Shaker (1997)
Production, songwriting and more by Andrew Hale
12 / Cottonbelly - Don’t Move (Date Unknown)
Production by Stuart Matthewman
13 / Diane Birch - Woman (2016)
Tenor saxophone by Stuart Matthewman
14 / Jim White - The Wrong Kind of Love (2001)
Production, percussions, piano and more by Andrew Hale
Bass by Paul Spencer Denman
15 / Maxwell - Lonely’s the Only Company (I&II) (1996)
Production, percussions, saxophone and more by Stuart Matthewman