2010 Soldier of Love
It's been 10 years since Sade's last album, but it hasn't affected the R&B singer's popularity. Her newest album Soldier of Love released just last month, but has already shot to the top of The Billboard 200 chart and has sold over 100,000 copies each week since its February 9th release. Celebrate Sade's success with us by taking a look back at all of her videos from her newest, "Soldier of Love," to her first hit, "Smooth Operator."
2000 Lovers Rock
During the period between Love Deluxe and Lovers Rock, the band members for Sade, Stuart Matthewman, Paul Denman and Andrew Hale, took an extended hiatus to form the group Sweetback. Matthewman also played a major role in the development of R&B singer Maxwell's career, providing instrumentation and production work for his first two albums. 2000's Lovers Rock included the single "By Your Side" and triggered the first Sade tour in more than ten years. A collection of performances from the tour was released in 2002, titled Lovers Live.
1992 Love Deluxe
The fourth album, 1992's Love Deluxe, was another in the streak of multi-platinum Sade albums, spinning off the hits "No Ordinary Love," "Feel No Pain," and "Pearls."
1988 Stronger Than Pride
Sade's third album was 1988's Stronger Than Pride, and featured their first number one single on the U.S. R&B chart, "Paradise," as well as "Nothing Can Come Between Us" and "Keep Looking."
1985 Promise
The second album, Promise, featured "Never as Good as the First Time" and "The Sweetest Taboo," the latter of which stayed on the U.S. Hot 100 for six months. Sade was so popular that some radio stations reinstated the '70s practice of playing album tracks, adding "Is It a Crime" and "Tar Baby" to their playlists. In 1986, Sade won the Grammy for Best New Artist.
1984 Diamond Life
Sade signed to the U.K. division of Epic Records, released her debut album Diamond Life and the single "Smooth Operator" reached top 10 in the U.K. later in the year. The album eventually went platinum on the strength of its singles.
1980 Musical Beginnings
Born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria, about 50 miles from Lagos, Sade was the daughter of an African father and an English mother. After her mother returned to England, Adu grew up on the North End of London, developing a good singing voice in her teens listening to Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, and Billie Holiday. She worked in and around the music industry, studied fashion design at St. Martin's School of Art in London while modeling on the side. By 1980, she started singing harmony with a Latin funk group called Arriva (co-writing the hit "Smooth Operator") and piquing the interest of record labels.