Sade

Sade's debut album introduced the world to this Nigerian model-turned-singer. Her detached vocal style and the deliberate, cool musical accompaniment struck a nerve. This is an album of great bedroom music -- supple, simple and buoyed primarily by Sade's resonant voice. It was a highly successful debut that hardly sounds dated nearly two decades later.

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-ub... More >

Though there's not much range to her grainy voice or well-meaning songwriting, she and her associates put their project over, and with a fashion model's virtues--taste, concept, sound (cf. "look"). There's no superfluity, no reveling in la luxe, not even an excessive tempo. Which is no doubt why I find myself crediting her humanitarian sentiments, even preferring her "Why Can't We Live Together" to Timmy Thomas's equally spare but naive original. And why those who find "Hang On to Your Love" and "Smooth Operator" seductive (instead of just warming, like me) will think they carry the whole album. (Grade - B)