Bring Me Home

The last day of middle school. 1984. It was a gorgeous June day and I celebrated by pulling out a lawn chair and laying in the sun. I had just finished three miserable years of middle school during which my awkwardness and introversion met headfirst with bullying and peer pressures. I was very thankful that that phase of my life was over. My reward, I told myself, was doing absolutely nothing. The minute I got home, I dumped my backpack and did some minor archeology in the garage, eventually excavating a boombox radio/cassette player. I found the pop station (in this backwater town, there was really only one) and, ceremoniously, took in a deep breath. I let the sun wash over me and took a seat. As I grew drowsy from the heat, the commercials on the radio ended. What happened next was utterly transformative.

The music started. A saxophone. Silky and soulful. It washed over me too but this time the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. This song hit me hard and seemingly altered my DNA.

I forgot where I was instantly. I was now flying first class to some exotic place. I was floating 35,000 feet in the air. I was going places and experiencing something new. I was grown up. I was instantly something that I had never been. I was...sophisticated.

And then the song ended. I turned up the radio hoping to hear the song title and artist. After an agonizing wait…he said it: Sade pronounced Shar-day. The song was Your Love is King. 

I am pretty sure Diamond Life was the first cassette that I bought for myself. It was instantly my music. It wasn’t the heavy metal albums I tried to consume to fit in. It wasn’t the hand-me down Madonna 45s my sister left when she moved out of town. It wasn’t my parents’ Ahmad Jamal jazz piano LPs that had graced the eclectic collection in the cabinet under the record player. This was my music. From this moment forward, I knew I had to live up to it.

Sade’s music is unique and I am not sure why I connected with it. It described pretty much everything that my life was not. But yet there is something in each song that consistently drew me back, that brought me home. I can’t describe what genre or style it is. When I was in high school, I used to get angry when others claimed it was smooth jazz. No, I had been subjected to hours of smooth jazz when I had to get my braces tightened. It wasn’t jazz jazz either. Or, at least, it was not the Bebop or big band jazz I knew. 

I remember once looking for Sade’s albums at a record store and finding them in the R&B section. I wondered why they were misplaced although I quickly came around to the logic of that placement. But the weird thing is, the music transcends that classification. Yet, the albums were rarely in the pop section although the crossover has been consistent. The music is different and it is hard to classify at times. That’s what makes it interesting. It is something in and of itself. 

Helen Folasade Adu is the lead singer and songwriter of the group that bears her stage name, Sade. She is a British artist born to an English mother and a Nigerian father. She rose to prominence in the mid-1980s in that same moment that brought other British New Wave groups. Like Duran Duran, Sade’s glamour made her an excellent visual representation of that first generation of music video performers. Her iconic style—hoop earrings and long black hair pulled back tight—seemed, to my 14 year old mind, the epitome of effortless elegance. We knew when she was singing that she, in fact, was the smooth operator. 

Sade’s songs cover a range of hard-hitting topics punctuated by themes of love, heartache, and occasionally social justice. The music, slower than traditional pop, exudes mid-century jazz and northern soul traces more than most Rhythm and Blues, I would argue. The group infuses pop beats with soulful susurrations of the saxophone and keyboard. The combination of everything creates an eclectic soundtrack to storytelling about the trials of finding and maintaining love. A New Yorker article describes the music and Sade’s rich voice as highlighting an “imperfect dignity over a show of pain” and if one begins to dissect the lyrics they can see allusions to the sharpness or threatening nature of love. In more than one song, there is a statement about how love is a gun and battles over the heart take their toll. The mix of love and war metaphors is at the forefront in the 2010 album Soldier of Love.

For most of her career, Sade has produced her music on her schedule. Long periods of hiatus punctuated, more recently, by spasmodic offerings of single songs. Her social media spits out announcements so infrequently that they—much like the star herself—leave her fans longing for more. Sade’s control of her time and image is antithetic to most figures of her stature and works to only create more mystery. We really only have the stage image and a few rare interviews. But that is all fine. It is what makes her remarkable. In an era when no one can seem to shut up about themselves, Sade gives us an alternative vision of stardom.

Make no mistake, as one, if not the most profitable female musician in Great Britain, she is a superstar with a career that has been more influential than anyone else in that wave of British Blitz kids that took the 80s by storm. You’ll occasionally hear hip hop and rap artists proclaim their love for Sade. And that is what this love letter is about. For me—a scrawny dork from eastern Washington state—to have Sade as the soundtrack to my life, speaks to the complexity and richness of her music. 

It’s a mistake to fixate on Sade as a style icon or sex symbol. She is both undoubtedly and, in her 60s, doesn’t appear to have aged at all. Her image is in no way mothering but, instead, like that really cool auntie. She has a casualness that is comforting and not at all threatening. This is the vulnerable character at the center of the stories in her songs who shares her wisdom with you. There are facets to the flawlessness that come from the trials that must have been in addition to the charmed life we assume she’s had. But, again, we don’t know much about her. 

So, we have to construct meaning from her discography. I am sure, like the diversity of her themes and the music itself, that we—her fans—have to derive our own meaning from her words and performances. And our memory of our own youth. It is not profound until you stop to think about how she has grown appeal over time and across a wide audience. As I sit writing this in the summer of 2020 and the Black Lives Matter protests across the globe, I can’t help but think about the legacy of Sade’s work and how, even in the 1980s, she and the group had subtly carried on the traditions of 1960s Motown and jazz. I am suggesting that, while pop music had to give way to hip hop, Sade is and was something more exalted: a bridge, an inexorable connection between the mid-20th century and this very moment. Simply, she deserves wider praise. The group itself is a mirror of multicultural cohesion that must also be celebrated. One appeal, to me, is their willingness to put Sade and the music forward. And to operate as something bigger than any one personality. The words, then, about love and pain are sung to us by someone who now bears the responsibility for taking the ideals of the past and delivering them across class and culture. 

Sade will, no doubt, continue to create on her own terms and the resulting music will elevate our worn and frazzled lives. In the sounds, we will be enriched and, of course, sophisticated again.