Osupa 26 January 2010 Featured Artist, Music One Comment

Sade was born in Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria^. Her middle name, Folasade, means honour confers your crown.^[3] Her parents, Bisi Adu, a Nigerian lecturer in economics of Yoruba background, and Anne Hayes, an English district nurse, met in London, married in 1955 and moved to Nigeria.^[2

SADE SOLDIER OF LOVE

^] Later, when the marriage ran into difficulties, Anne Hayes returned to England, taking four-year-old ^[4] Sade and her older brother Banji to live with her parents.^[2] When Sade was 11, she moved to near Clacton-on-Sea with her mother, and after completing school, she moved to London and studied at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.^[2]

While at college, she joined a soul band, Pride, in which she sang backing vocals.^[2] Her solo performances of the song Smooth Operator attracted the attention of record companies and in 1983, she signed a solo deal with Epic Records taking three members of the band, Stuart Matthewman, Andrew Hale and Paul Denman, with her.^[2] Sade and her band produced the first of a string of hit albums, the debut album Diamond Life, in 1984, and have subsequently sold over 50 million albums.^[2] She is the most successful solo female artist in British history.^[2]

A marriage to Spanish film director Carlos Pliego ended in 1995 after six years.^[2] She gave birth to a daughter, Ila Adu, in 1996 after a relationship with a Jamaican musician.^[2] She was made a member of the Order of the British Empire in 2002.^[2] She lives in Stroud, Gloucestershire.^[5] Sade is, as the Daily Mail described it, “famously reclusive”^[6] and prior to the release of Soldier of Love in 2010, Sade’s last public appearance was in 2002, when she collected her OBE at Buckingham Palace.^[6]