“No one does small-hours heartbreak quite like Sade”: The singer photographed in 1990 by David Graves
From aching soul to minimalist funk, Sade and her band don’t make many records but their quality has never waned. As a career box set is released, in today’s Guardian critic Alexis Petridis ranks their 20 best songs…
No 1: By Your Side (2000)
There’s a compelling argument that Lovers Rock is Sade’s masterpiece, a collection of deeply affecting meditations on parenthood, loss and race on which they simultaneously pared down and broadened out their sound: its tracks subtly encompass everything from hip-hop to reggae to singer-songwriter folksiness. And, in By Your Side, it has Sade’s greatest song: its hushed atmosphere not a million miles removed from Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry, its melody so perfectly formed it feels instantly familiar, its lyrics simple but moving. How it isn’t the kind of modern standard that gets regularly murdered on The X Factor is an enduring mystery, although the 1975’s Auto-Tune-heavy cover is nice enough.
➢ Visit The Guardian to read reviews of the other
19 tracks in the Petridis Top 20
➢ Previously at Shapers of the 80s:
2010, Comeback Shard comfy as ‘Auntie Sade’
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 