Sade the best of sade full album11/11/2022 ![]() Despite their outward mellowness, these songs always have a faint darkness at the edges. “Wanna share my life/Wanna share my life with you,” they duet on the upbeat “Paradise.” “Nothing can come/Nothing can come/Nothing can come/Between us,” they incant on “Nothing Can Come Between Us.” These chants aren’t particularly catchy, but their repetition imbues the record with a quiet anguish. The writing takes on a mantric bent as Adu reuses phrases and words from previous verses and repeats them by herself or alongside background singer (and secret weapon) Leroy Osbourne, whose rich voice adds warmth to her cool melodies. But there is an emotional clarity to these spare lyrics-a cleanness almost, as if Adu has rinsed them in cold water. Compared to the glitz and melodrama of hits like “Smooth Operator,” “Is It a Crime?”and “Jezebel,” these songs don’t have much sizzle or flair. “Give it up, give it all” on “Give It Up” is delivered less like a steamy bedroom command and more like a call to prayer. “To turn my back on you/Now would I turn my back on me?” she asks on the dubby “Turn My Back on You,” perhaps the only Sade song that could be described as hard. Her writing is noticeably less scenic and moody, treating love as more of a concept than an embodied experience. “I still really, really love you,” she croons.Īdu maintains the directness and simplicity of the title track throughout the record. As she sings of a love that endures a betrayal, the weightlessness of the arrangements sells her candor. The arrangement on lithe title track “Love Is Stronger Than Pride” is open like a cloudless sky, carried by a patter of keys, percussion, and pan flute that drift around Sade’s airy voice. The record isn’t as minimal as that quote suggests (especially when compared to the ethereal, hollowed-out mood music of Love Deluxe), but it is certainly sparse. “I wanted it to be more basic and less embellished, with the quiet songs quieter and the harder songs harder,” band leader Sade Adu said at the time. The music on Stronger Than Pride is reduced on all fronts: softer rhythms, lighter melodies, fleeter verses. While Sade doesn’t reinvent itself on Stronger Than Pride, it does unwind. ![]() The latter even features some horn blasts-practically an indulgence, given the band’s tendency toward restraint and poise. Sade doesn’t do outright jams, but “Keep Looking” and “Give It Up” come close, locking into grooves and letting the melodies leisurely unfurl. ![]() The album is a breezy, unrushed affair, where songs loop back in on themselves, sway in place, and fizzle out. Guitarist and saxophonist Stuart Matthewman recalled it as the first time the band composed songs piecemeal rather than as a collective, an approach perceptible in the looseness of the compositions. Written in Spain and London and then recorded in France and the Bahamas over the course of a year, the album took shape casually. After releasing and touring their first two records in quick succession, the band took a breather for Stronger Than Pride. ![]()
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