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Smooth Operator: The Song That Made Sade the Coolest Voice in the World
Smooth Operator: The Song That Made Sade the Coolest Voice in the World Picture London in the summer of 1984. The charts are full of synthesizers turned up to eleven — Frankie Goes to Hollywood shouting about pleasure, Duran Duran preening on yachts, George Michael winking at the camera. Pop has never been louder, brighter,…
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Sade: The Woman Behind the Silence
She is the most private star in pop music — a woman who has given fewer interviews in forty years than most celebrities give in a month. Sade Adu has sold tens of millions of records while living like someone determined to be forgotten by the gossip columns. But behind the silence is a rich,…
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How Sade Created “Love Deluxe”: The Mermaid, the Silence, and the Masterpiece
In 1992, after four years of near-total silence, Sade returned with a song that sounded like it was recorded at the bottom of the ocean — and a video in which she played a mermaid who wanted to be a bride. “No Ordinary Love” was seven minutes of bass-heavy longing that bore almost no resemblance…
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The Untold Story of Sade: The Reclusive Queen Who Made the Music Industry Wait
There is no one in pop music quite like Sade. In an industry built on noise, she built a career on silence — long, luxurious silences between albums, between tours, between public appearances. Six studio albums in more than forty years. A singer who could disappear for a decade and return to the top of…