But the eight years between Love Deluxe and Lovers Rock was unusually long, even for the market demands of the pre-streaming era. Sade’s prolonged hiatuses now function as a social contract between the band and its fans, the gap steadily growing between each album. Adu’s instinct for sexiness carries across Lovers Rock, this time her lower register hinting at the kind of intimacy that comes from gentle restraint and sustained eye contact. Instead of the sumptuous boudoir Sade had unintentionally helped turn into a cliche with the ubiquity of songs like “Smooth Operator” and “Your Love Is King,” they turn up the natural sensuality of a winding breeze and a low, gibbous moon. But on Lovers Rock, Sade gives them space, wisely surrendering Matthewman’s velveteen saxophone, the signature instrumentation that threatened to calcify them as a relic of the ’80s easy listening cohort. Of course, the roots had always been there, in the form of Adu’s unusual melodies, razor-sharp lyrics, and the band’s lush grooves. “It’s less about the surface and more about the roots,” she said at the time. Across Lovers Rock, Adu’s vocals, thick and low as always, recede into a breezy landscape of acoustic guitar, reggae bass, and simple percussion.
Its 11 tracks share that understated energy, trading Sade’s signature luxuriance for a sparser, knottier sound, landing beautifully between the pastiched, jazzy pop of fellow ’80s UK breakouts like the Style Council and Everything But the Girl and the growing neo-soul bloc giving an edge to R&B in the late ’90s. Instead, it’s her side profile, eyes looking down and away, that form its impression. The band’s fifth album was the first whose cover didn’t spotlight Adu’s full face. By 2010, though, Adu had famously turned away for the cover of Soldier of Love, Sade’s most recent release, she offered the camera her back.īut that retreat had begun in earnest on Lovers Rock, a decade earlier. And what a face it is for the first half of the band’s nearly 40-year career, the dancing, almond eyes and wide, perpetually rouged mouth of its frontwoman marshaled multi-platinum after multi-platinum album. More light lands on the bodypack hanging at Adu’s hip than on her face itself. The bright, disembodied heads of her bandmates-Stuart Matthewman, Andrew Hale, and Paul Denman-float behind her, a rich supporting cast. The lead image presents Sade Adu on stage and in silhouette, shot from somewhere below. Even on Sade’s official website, you have to dig around to properly see the woman herself.
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