A diamond life

It's been a long time between albums, but Sade's silky, seductive vocals are back, writes KATHERINE TULICH.

Though it's eight years since Sade has released an album, little has changed since 1984, the year she released her memorable debut single Smooth Operator and her album Diamond Life.

While in the same time Madonna has had a chameleon-like career, Sade's music has stayed the same - sophisticated smooth jazz grooves with seductive honey vocals poured gently over the top.

Her new album Lovers Rock treads familiar territory musically, while visually, with her hair characteristically pulled tight off her face, Sade looks just the same.

Puffing endlessly on cigarettes, the eternally youthful 42-year-old singer sits in her hip north London hotel suite and struggles to explain the reasons for her long career sabbatical.

Sade has never enjoyed courting attention, so the customary publicity trail that comes with a new album release is an unwelcome but necessary intrusion.

After all, eight years is a lifetime in the music industry, and even Sade acknowledges the need to let people know she is back. "I'm still walking down the street and people stop to ask me when will I have a new album out, and I have to tell them, 'Well, I've actually got one out."'

Sade's long hibernation took place after a world tour to support the release of her last album, 1992's Love Deluxe. During that time she divorced Spanish documentary filmmaker Carlos Scola whom she married in 1989.

Then in 1995 she became pregnant with her daughter Ila, to Jamaican record producer Bob Morgan. It was a relationship she stumbles to define, other than saying they have an "understanding." It was some time before she felt she and her daughter were ready for her to go back to work.

"When I first had her I just didn't have the desire or the lust to get back into the studio and even when I was there I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing," she says.

"When I work I have to cut myself off from the world, so it's been tough on her because I would have periods away from her. If she did come to the studio her attitude was why didn't I just sing really quickly so I could spend time with her," Sade says, then pauses to justify. "But then I can't completely deny myself everything. I know she'll understand when she is older that this is important for me, too."

Lovers Rock may have come after a difficult labour, but it's an admirable achievement, mature and more heartfelt than previous albums.

Gone are the easily digested dance grooves of The Sweetest Taboo or Hang On To Your Love. In their place is a more organic work that still draws on elements of jazz and reggae, but seems so spontaneous in emotion and structure that it has the feel of being made up on the spot.

"I know everyone likes to say this about their latest album, but I really think this is the best one," she says. "I think this album is more me. It's more rough and ready."

Her long-suffering band mates, guitarist Stuart Matthewman, keyboard-player Andrew Hale and bassist Paul S Denman adjusted to Sade's mode of working.

She wasn't prepared to drop everything to lock herself away to record, so Lovers Rock took six months to complete.

With friendships that dated back more than 20 years when they all played together in Latin funk collective Pride, the band were unusually understanding.

"I can't do it like a day job. It has to be when the moment is right and I can put 100 per cent into it," Sade says. "But I guess if it wasn't for their gentle coercion, I might never have made another album."

In fact, if it wasn't for gentle coercion she would never have been a singer at all.

Born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria, to a white English nurse and a Nigerian teacher, she never had any ambitions to sing. Her parents divorced when she was 4 and her mother took her to Essex, England.

After leaving school she studied fashion design until some friends in a local band badgered her to join them until they found a "real" singer. Sade agreed, as long as it was temporary.

"I ended up singing by mistake really. It never was my ambition, and I was absolutely petrified when I first went on stage," she admits.

"I never thought I had a great voice. Technically it's inadequate in lots of ways, but I also think that's my strength. It's my way of expressing. If I got coaching I'd probably become too self-conscious about it."

By the time she was fronting Pride, record companies were courting her rather than the band. "The boys eventually told me to go for it, so the record company signed only me, and they were fine about it. We share the money and it still gives them freedom," she says.

As Sade, they have sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, but Sade the reluctant star reflects how fame has changed her.

"If anything, fame has made me quieter. When I was younger I was very effusive, always acting the fool. I loved to make people laugh. Becoming famous made me more introverted. Now I tend to be quieter and sneak around a lot more, trying not to be noticed. I'm much less cheeky than I used to be."