Singing in the shadows

When most pop stars cant stay away from the spotlight,Sade has hung back. Now shes back with her first album in 10 years....

When a man from a radio station asked Sade what she had been doing in the 10 years between albums,she told him,Ive been in a cave,and I just rolled the boulder out of it.

She chuckled as she recounted the exchange,with her feet tucked up on the couch at her Georgian house in the London neighborhood of Islington.

Sade,a slender figure in black pants and a black V-neck sweater,made things cozy,feeding kindling to a crackling fire in the hearth. An interview about her new album,Soldier of Love only her sixth studio album dating back to her 1984 debutstretched into a four-hour conversation.

Ive got absolutely no real perception,properly,of time, said Sade,51,who was born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan,Nigeria. Her father was a Nigerian university teacher of economics; her mother was an English nurse,and raised her in rural England after the couple divorced. Sades speaking voice is even lower than the husky alto in her songs,the elegantly subdued ballads that have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide.

Sades hits,like Smooth Operator,No Ordinary Love and The Sweetest Taboo,were ubiquitous through the 1980s and 1990s,purring out of radios and lending ambience to countless lounges,restaurants and boutiques. Sade emerged in the music-video era her debut album,Diamond Life,appeared a year after Madonnas did,when many pop stars believe they need maximum media exposure to sustain a career. Instead Sade has hung back,letting the songs alone define her. Its a decision that may,in the end,make her more cherished. Fans have not forgotten her; preorder made Soldier of Love No. 2 on the Amazon sales chart last week.

As far as the music business went,Sade might as well have been in some cave after 2002,when she and her band finished touring for their 2000 album,Lovers Rock. She vanished from stages,magazine covers,gossip columns and other celebrity-promotion zones,though she did contribute a song to a 2005 benefit DVD,Voices for Darfur.

I love writing songs, Sade said. But then,going beyond that,I find it a little bit difficult,the sort of opening myself up to everything thats attached to it in the music business generally,the expectations and pressures that are put onto you. Some people love all of the trimmings and everything that comes with that. But I happen to not be one of those people.

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Even as she was working on Soldier of Love,she said,I ventured in with a little trepidation. I wasnt eager to get back out there and be recognised again.

The new album doesnt radically change the sound of Sade,which is also the name of the band she has led since 1983 with Stuart Matthewman on guitar and saxophone,Andrew Hale on keyboards and Paul Denman on bass. Soldier of Love is another collection of slow,pensive songs,mostly in minor keys,often pondering lost love and uncertain journeys.

Sades band members had scattered in the 80s and 90sMatthewman in New York,Denman in Los Angeles,Hale in Londonand band members had been hinting,and waiting. Ill always drop everything to work with her, Matthewman said. The members reconvened in 2008,the first time they had been together since the tour.

An album meant a cover photograph,and Sade was reluctant at first. Everybody around me said,Youre mad, she recalled. The compromise was a photo with her back turned,gazing out over ruins. Youre not looking at me, she said hopefully. Youre surveying the journey ahead and the history as well.