Diamond Life

Sade is a band named after its singer, Sade Adu, born in Nigeria and raised in England. Their debut took six weeks to record in a London studio and came out in the summer of 1984, into a Britain full of synthesizers and big hair. It offered the opposite: live bass, saxophone, restraint. It won the Brit Award for best British album and became one of the decade's best selling debuts. Smooth Operator, a song about a heartless charmer working first class, made Adu's face and voice famous on two continents.