Nowadays, it seems like it takes artists no time at all to make an album. Some of them will churn out multiple releases a year off of sheer creative power. Add to that the incredible amount of records that come out every day on streaming, and it can feel very overwhelming. However, back in the day, artists like Sade would spend years between releases, making her and the band’s fans feverishly yearn for new music. For instance, there’s an eight-year gap between Love Deluxe and Lovers Rock in 1992 and 2000, respectively. Then, Soldier of Love came out a decade later in 2010.
So why doesn’t the group release more? Sure, everyone can’t be like Prince and live and breathe the music. But why such a wait? In a 1992 interview with journalist Michael A. Gonzales, Sade Adu admitted she’s a hard perfectionist with her music. So sometimes, writing the perfect song can be an incredibly laborious process. At the end of the day, she can’t tinker with a record once they sell it on shelves.
Sade Adu Says She Agonizes Over Making the Perfect Song
“When you make a record it’s so concrete, you know? You can’t run around and change it once it’s on vinyl. I know I don’t get angry with anyone except myself, really. I hate that I’m so hard on myself— I really I wish I could take it out on other people. It would be easier to blame somebody else, but I’m not that kind of person. So, however long it takes; sometimes the songs come really quickly, they just fall into place,” Sade Adu explained. “Others you have to manipulate to get what you want out of them so they can say what you want them to say.”
Funnily enough, despite the four-year gap between Stronger Than Pride and Love Deluxe, the process of making the latter only took about four months. But that’s only because she’d been sitting on a few different ideas for a long time, and they came together a bit easier. The only reason Adu didn’t make them sooner was because of that perfectionist mindset.
“Some of the songs on here are things I wanted to write about a long time ago. One in particular was ‘Like A Tattoo,’” Sade Adu recalled. “That song is about a man who has been in Vietnam, but it’s not really about Vietnam. It’s about war and killing somebody. I met a guy in a bar in New York years ago. It was an Irish bar on 14th Street. The song was my interpretation of what he told me. I tried to write it before, but it didn’t quite work out. I’ve been writing songs since I was a child.”
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