FEATURE:
Hang On to Your Love
Sade’s Diamond Life at Forty
_________
A truly brilliant debut album…
that reached number two in the U.K. and number five in the U.S., Diamond Life is a classic. Led by the intoxicating and sublime Sade Adu, the album boasts singles as grand and timeless as Smooth Operator and Your Love Is King. Prior to forming Sade, Adu began as a backing singer for British group, Pride. Adu and three original members of the group - Paul Anthony Cook, Paul Denman and Stuart Matthewman - departed the group to form Sade. It was not long before their titular lead gained interest from record labels. Recorded at Power Plant (London) from October to November 1983, the band wrote the tracks. Stuart Matthewman and Sade Adu wrote the majority fo the tracks together. Fifteen songs were recorded. Some cassette versions featured fifteen tracks, through the L.P. and C.D. versions have nine tracks. There are various reason why Diamond Life is so enduring. The mix of Soul, Jazz and Pop is a brew and blend hard to resist. Perhaps not that common up to 1984, we mark forty years of this brilliant album on 16th July. I want to get to a few features and reviews for Diamond Life. One of the most important and impressive debut albums of the 1980s, I hope that a new generation of listeners pick it up ahead of its fortieth anniversary. I am going to start out with a feature from Albumism published in 2019. It is interesting discovering the background and lead-up to Diamond Life:
“Helen Folasade Adu was born to Adebisi Adu—a Nigerian lecturer—and Anne Hayes—an English nurse; she was the second child conceived by this interracial couple residing in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria, undoubtedly a remarkable origin given the period. When Adu and Hayes’ marriage fractured four years after their daughter’s birth, Hayes relocated back to the United Kingdom with her children, settling first in Colchester and later in Holland-on-Sea—two areas of Essex, England. Hayes did her best to give her son and daughter a normal upbringing and that structure allowed them to focus on whatever their passions might be; Adu’s interest centered around the plush lure of fashion.
For the young woman who would come to be known as Sade—a shortened version of her middle-name Folasade—London called to her and in pursuit of a higher education based in fashion, Adu enrolled in the venerated Saint Martin’s School of Art at 18. While Adu tasked away at her clothing design studies, another point of curiosity began to surface within her: music. It began innocuously with the Saint Martin’s student singing with Pride, an emergent and polite funk outfit popular in and around London at the very top of the 1980s.
Everything changed upon Adu forming a creative friendship with Pride’s dapper guitarist/saxophonist Stuart Matthewman. Adu and Matthewman began writing together and out of those scripting spells came the embryonic song shape of “Smooth Operator.”
Adu and Matthewman’s inevitable defection from Pride occurred in the first half of 1983; Adu’s activities at St. Martin’s ceased thereafter as well. Soon, the duo saw themselves expand to a proper group with the addition of keyboardist Andrew Hale and bassist Paul Denman. The artistic chemistry between Adu, Matthewman, Hale and Denman bonded the four youths right away and upon deciding to christen themselves after the namesake of their lead vocalist, the quartet got busy tightening up their live presentation.
By mid-1983, Sade had racked up several lauded showcases in London and one abroad in New York City. Record label intrigue reached a fever pitch in the wake of these performances and Sade eventually received a formal invitation to sign with Epic Records. Upon signing with the imprint, work commenced on their debut album Diamond Life with producer Robin Millar over a six-week span.
The nine-track song cycle is a sumptuous aural spread comprised of lithe funk (“Smooth Operator”), exotic jazz tones (“Your Love Is King”) and robust R&B (“Frankie’s First Affair”). A smart pack of session men provided support for Matthewman, Hale and Denman, however, it is their respective chops that give each track its own enthralling sonic radiance. Dovetailing between meticulousness and improvisation, the space between those two methods is where Sade’s trademark sophistication reveals itself on the steamy floor-filling black pop of “Hang on to Your Love” and the nimble soul of “I Will Be Your Friend.”
The entries contained on Diamond Life don’t just flout instrumental prowess, compelling song texts sit ensconced at the core of the arrangements and an identifiable vocal presence breathes life into them. Aside from a co-write credit from Ray St. John on “Smooth Operator,” a four-way split between the band members on the flashy “Cherry Pie,” and a cover of the social commentary chestnut “Why Can’t We Live Together?”—originally handled by the stateside singer Timmy Thomas in 1972—the remainder of Diamond Life leaped forward from the imaginations of Adu and Matthewman. Standing tall amongst the spicy rhythm sections, rich brass accompaniment and assorted percussion patterns of her musical brothers is Adu. She enchantingly straddles the divide between observation and active participation in every narrative gathered here.
When Diamond Life did finally arrive in stores in July of 1984, it made quite a splash. The record not only blew open an already vibrant rhythm and blues scene in the United Kingdom, it helped to center it as a dually dominant force capable of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with its American counterpart for decades to come. Further, Sade’s rise to prominence became living proof that a woman of color fronting a coterie of white male musicians could be a persuasive platinum seller as much as any of the antecedent English music exported to foreign shores.
With five more acclaimed studio recordings having come since Diamond Life, Sade’s international reputation is undiminished. Still, the darker resonance and romance of Diamond Life is as powerful as it was thirty-five years ago when taken on its own merits, separate from Sade’s other projects. Inspiring and enrapturing to any and all who encounter it, the classic appeal of this effort will continue to endure amid the finite trends that are part and parcel of today’s manic music marketplace”.
I would encourage people to pick up a copy of Diamond Life. It is a true classic! One of the most distinct and beautiful debut albums ever. Such rich songwriting. Those unbelievable, knee-buckling and hugely soulful vocals from Sade Adu! I will end up with a couple of reviews for an album that has gone multi-platinum. The incredible Sade were almost the forebearers of the British R&B wave that came in the late-1980s and 1990s. Artists like Soul II Soul, The Brand New Heavies, Simply Red, Jamiroquai, and Lisa Stansfield followed. I feel many of them took something from Sade. The band definitely brought Neo-Soul to the fore. The first review I want to include is from Rolling Stone:
“Ferocity and abandon are the hallmarks of a certain, and maybe the best, kind of soul music, but Sade's neat, self-possessed sophistication has its own shine.
Sometimes snubbed as "middle of the road," Sade did keep her soul under control on 1984's Diamond Life. There's the elegiac "Sally," as well as the curiously empathetic "Frankie's First Affair," in which a smooth operator gets his emotional comeuppance. And even the still-ubiquitous, samba-laced "Smooth Operator" is closer to a cautionary tale from a too-wise young woman than an actual revelation of whatever may have been Helen Folasade Adu's blues.
Finally, though, with the swinging, wrenching "Cherry Pie" (and, to a lesser extent, with the torchy "Your Love Is King"), Sade sets her elastic, evocative alto free. She's the queen of going thick and rich with her voice, but the way Sade flings out "You were the only one/You were the only one" over attitudinal percussion is intoxicating and forceful, and the band (Stewart Matthewman, Paul Denman, Andrew Hale, Paul Cooke) must have known it: At almost six and a half minutes, "Cherry Pie" is the longest and best song on Diamond Life.
If Sade hadn't rocked it so proudly, girls such as Alicia Keys and Erykah Badu and male crooners including Maxwell (whom Matthewman ushered into the limelight) and Eric Benet would have had less to feed their artistic selves. Twenty years later, Sade's Diamond Life has lost none of its blue bling-bling”.
Let’s finish off with a review from Pitchfork. They also look back at 1984 and where Diamond Life fitted in. A year where big stadium acts and New Romantics dominated the British scene, it might have been quite hard for Sade to break into the mainstream. As it was, Diamond Life was embraced and was a huge commercial success:
“In 1984, while British new romantics like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet filled arenas with enormous synth-pop, Sade became the minimalists, crafting quiet, vintage soul out of basic components. Their end product, Diamond Life, values brevity. The band had a weapon in lead singer Helen Folasade Adu—Sade for short—a modest contralto who wore hoops with a classic red lip and moved in silence like Carmen Sandiego. Despite early comparisons to the likes of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, Sade, then 25, saw not jazz but Black American soul as her band’s core influence. “I’m frightened of anyone for one minute thinking that we’re trying to be a jazz band, because if we were, we could do it a lot better than we’re doing now,” Sade said in 1985. “Our music is clearly pop, because it’s easy to understand.”
More precisely, their sound liquified soul and jazz into new-school pop. They were executors of spaciousness. With Diamond Life, Sade produced feeling music that became a prototype for a generation of singers who favored naked elegance: D’Angelo, Jill Scott, Alicia Keys. Maxwell later borrowed guitarist, saxophonist, and co-writer Stuart Matthewman for his own immaculate 1996 debut Urban Hang Suite; and Drake once equated the “dark sexy feel” of Sade’s records to those on his mixtape So Far Gone. The seductive undertones of artists like Tinashe and Yuna are similarly tethered to Sade, whose fierce dashes of sensuality originated here.
Over nine tracks, Sade sings of unwanted separation and missed connections under the banner of “quiet storm” music, the nickname for mood-setting, after-hours R&B that powered adult contemporary radio. Washington’s WHUR-FM is said to have originated the format in 1976 in response to radio programming that featured predominantly white easy listening acts. Quiet storm was, in contrast, a platform for balladeers like Anita Baker and Luther Vandross and their mellow grade of soul. For Sade, a band that conveyed turbulence even in their subtlety, the label fit. The swagger of “Smooth Operator,” their breakout U.S. single, almost overshadows the fact that the subject’s task is to travel across state lines breaking hearts. Their album, for the most part, seeks out and cherishes serenity and stability in partnerships while acknowledging the rocky parts. Lead U.S. single “Hang On to Your Love,” a stylish, midtempo number, views commitment as a courageous act, and on “Your Love Is King,” Sade drags out her prose, praising ordinary love between the exhales of a sax. The song has all the romance of a shimmering sunset gondola ride.
Born in Ibadan, Nigeria, Sade moved to England at 4 with her mother and brother. As early as 14, she began hitting nightclubs, and by the mid-’80s, the former art student turned menswear designer was casually experimenting as a backup vocalist in the seven-piece funk band Pride. Sade and Matthewman then morphed into a slicker breakout known collectively as Sade (a band name suggested by the singer herself), with Sade as their lead singer, keyboardist Andrew Hale, and bassist Paul S. Denman.
At the time, Sade was living in a deserted fire station, where she and Matthewman would listen to her collection of soul records, from Curtis Mayfield to Nina Simone. When band manager Lee Barrett began shopping a demo featuring “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King”—material they’d been performing in clubs across England—producer Robin Millar said label execs dismissed their songs as “too slow, jazzy, and too long.” Next to the electro-pop of that era, Sade read as desperately tender, which proved to be an asset. The band eventually landed a deal with Epic in 1983 and issued Diamond Life the following year.
As with other idols whose enigma was part of their appeal, Sade practically invented the artist hiatus, taking years-long breaks between records, trading celebrity for freedom and longevity. She was, by all accounts, the coolest in everyone’s orbit. Tom Hanks, who appeared with Sade on Saturday Night Live in 1985, told The New York Times, “Calling her elusive or mysterious might color her as unkind or remote. She was not that. She was, rather, just very comfortable in the command of her art, as well as her presence.” Sade communicated gravity, often amid a cascade of keys and gentle sax riffs suspended in the air. Her voice entered the room like a chill. But her strength was in her ability to render truth and desire concisely. In relaying the sensation of a physical rush on “Your Love Is King,” she sings, “You’re making me dance…” and pauses before settling the emotion: “…Inside,” stretching its syllables into eternity.
The tracks on Diamond Life play in the arena of blues because Sade sought inspiration in the love stories of soul music that centered everyday people. On Diamond Life, she’s still refining her narrative voice, so the allegory in a cut like “Sally,” a sauntering tour through “one angry day in New York,” about the Salvation Army, has good intentions, but it’s the rare Sade song that offers the pretense of sentimentality in lieu of the real thing. The working-class anxieties that became a thread in their music materialize on “When Am I Going to Make a Living,” a song Sade wrote on the back of a receipt from the cleaners one night during a downpour.
Even when the lounginess is laid on thick, the album’s tones are subdued enough to be affecting. The damp ambiance of songs like “Frankie’s First Affair” and the six-plus-minute “Cherry Pie” burn like the type of molten soul expected to backdrop a film noir. While the track billows and tapers, becoming more atmospheric than dynamic by the end, Sade’s debut is a strong compilation of stories that bristle with simplicity”.
On 16th July, Diamond Life turns forty. It celebrates its ruby anniversary. When ranking Sade’s albums, I would put Diamond Life at the top. Many might say it is 1992’s Love Deluxe. Such a confident and wonderfully immersive and original debut album, I hope that there is spotlight of Diamond Life as it turns forty. Singles like When Am I Going to Make a Living and Hang On to Your Love sit alongside wonderful deeper cuts like Sally and Cherry Pie. There is no denying that Sade’s Diamond Life was…
SUCH a spectacular start.