Sade

Helen Folasade Adu, also known as Sade, was born in Ibadan, Nigeria. Her father was a Nigerian university economics teacher; her mother Anne was an English nurse. The couple met in London while he was studying at the LSE and moved to Nigeria shortly after getting married. When their daughter was born, nobody locally was prepared to call her by her English name, and a shortened version of Folasade stuck. Then, when she was four, her parents separated, and her mother brought Sade and her elder brother Banji back to England, where they initially lived with their grandparents just outside Colchester, Essex.


She listened to American soul music, particularly the wave led in the 1970's by artists such as Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway, and Bill Withers. As a teenager, she saw the Jackson 5 at the Rainbow theatre in Finsbury Park, where she worked behind the bar at weekends. "I was more fascinated by the audience than by anything that was going on on the stage. They'd attracted kids, mothers with children, old people, white, black. I was really moved. That's the audience I've always aimed for."


Music was not her first choice as a career. She studied fashion at St Martin's School Of Art and only began singing after two old school friends with a fledgling group approached her to help them out with the vocals.

Sade has an outstanding and distinctive voice that calms the listener. She is a great artist that creates an album only when she has something excellent to offer to her fans. Some of her most popular songs to the wide public are Soldier of Love, No ordinary love, By your side etc.

More info at http://www.sade.com/gb/home/