1.Smooth Operator (Diamond Life, 1985).
Sade’s debut album introduced us to this Nigerian model-turned-singer. With a sultry voice that flows like a mixture of chocolate syrup and cognac, she captured the attention of music lovers with the saxophone driven hit, Smooth Operator. This song set the tone for the rest of the album, with its smooth jazz and world beat background. Sexy, languid and hip, it doesn’t sound dated even twenty years later.
2.Is it a Crime (Promise, 1986).
A year later, Sade issued her second album. The album’s title, Promise, played with the concept of potential and trust, and it exceeded both expectations. The album launches with a blow-your-doors-off cabaret song, Is it a Crime. It’s loud and powerful, but held tightly under the grip of Sade’s supreme control. Even when she shouts or cries, there’s never a missed note, never a break in her resonant vocals. Not even as she asks “Is it a crime, that I still want you, and I want you to want me too?”
3.The Sweetest Taboo (Promise, 1986).
But the real star of her sophomore album is The Sweetest Taboo, an unlikely combination of sultry jazz and intense Latin and African drum beats. It has a light-funk tempo, and departs from the rest of the theme of the album, which is about pain and recovery. Not as wrenching You’re Not the Man nor as grown up as Jezebel, The Sweetest Taboo nonetheless proved to be the flagship of the album and is recognizable immediately on any radio station today.
4.Haunt Me (Stronger than Pride, 1988).
Sade’s third album was technically as strong as the first two, but seemed to suffer from some experimentation in studio funk that didn’t pan out as well as hoped. The smash hit Paradise was considered to be the album’s best song, but was, in some ways, The Sweetest Taboo all over again with a stronger baseline. It was really the shivering lullaby, Haunt Me that stood apart from the rest, taking advantage of Sade’s lovely voice, and adding a new depth of emotion. It is in the whispers of this song that Sade’s legendary control eases off and leaves us with an elegant ballad of unrequited love. She nearly brings tears to the eyes as she croons, “And if you want to sleep, I’ll be quiet, like an angel. As quiet as your soul could be, if only you knew, you had a friend like me.”
5.No Ordinary Love (Love Deluxe, 1992).
Sade took her time writing her next collection, perhaps aware that Stronger than Pride did not showcase her talents as well as it could have. It would be four years before she put out another album, and when she did it was arguably her best work. Love Deluxe went multi-platinum, and absolutely hypnotized audiences with its maturity, passion, and soul. No Ordinary Love is an outrageously sexy song that builds like Bolero-it is bedroom music, but intense and exotic. No ordinary love song, indeed. This song would combine jazz, pop rock, and soul in such a distinct way that it would become Sade’s signature style.
6.Like a Tattoo (Love Deluxe, 1992).
Love Deluxe came after Sade’s painful divorce, so sadness was to be expected. But the song Like a Tattoo gave the first hint that the album was going to be dark and icy, with lyrics that would haunt long after the song had ended. Like a Tattoo is huskier than the others, and honest about the kinds of scars that lovers leave upon one another in broken relationships.
7.Bullet Proof Soul (Love Deluxe, 1992).
Bullet Proof Soul takes Sade’s icy detachment, and ratchets up the stakes a notch. In this bewitching song, the music builds slowly to tell a story that you can only think will end in a terrible act of vengeance. The brutal emotional honesty of the lyrics overshadow the music, as they do in most of the songs on the Love Deluxe album.
8.Pearls (Love Deluxe, 1992).
But Sade keeps her own pain in perspective. The album is bleakest in Pearls, a song about human suffering beyond heartbreak. Pearls would not be the first song in which Sade took on political subjects, but it would be her most powerful effort. With a whisper, she pierces the heart with this song about “a woman in Somalia” who “lives a life she didn’t choose.” Sade doesn’t croon in broad strokes about starving people-she personalizes the issue with a story of a woman who struggles to feed her child, while crying Hallelujah. Listen to it once, and it will make your problems seem insignificant.
9.By Your Side (Lovers Rock, 2000).
Eight years later, Sade released Lovers Rock, a softer, prettier, gentler album with notes of genuine happiness mixed in with the melancholy. More guitars, less drum. But the smoky ballad reigns triumphant, and By Your Side is the best of them. This ephemeral song isn’t about intense passion or forbidden love, but a promise of grown up love and commitment that warms the heart.
10. The Sweetest Gift (Lovers Rock, 2000).
It would have been easy to choose the aching melody, The King of Sorrow for the top ten songs, but there is a prettier song, called The Sweetest Gift. It’s a simple acoustic lullaby that features Sade’s velvet voice in a way it has never been showcased before. She wrote the song for children in a hospital, so it carries with it a note of hopefulness tinged with sadness – the exact emotion that is most emblematic of the singer’s sound, and makes it a fitting choice to complete a list of her top ten works.
