The album contained such radio-friendly hits as 'Is It A Crime', 'Never As Good As The First Time' and 'The Sweetest Taboo', the artist's signature song which enjoyed a six-month run on the American pop charts. It spent 98 weeks on the UK charts, 81 weeks on the Billboard Top 200, and spawned the hit singles 'Your Love Is King', 'Hang On To Your Love' and 'Smooth Operator' while earning Sade a Grammy Award for Best New Artist.īetween February and August 1985 the same team then reassembled for Sade's even more successful follow-up Promise, which was co-produced by her, Robin Millar, Mike Pela and, in a less central role, Ben Rogan.
Recorded by 'production engineer' Mike Pela and featuring the contributions of Sade bandmates Stuart Matthewman (guitar/sax), Paul Denman (bass) and Andrew Hale (keyboards), Diamond Life was produced with a slick, quasi-jazz feel by Robin Millar at his own Power Plant facility in North-West London. Her laid-back, near-emotionless vocal delivery served as a perfect counterpoint to the high-passion, heavily embellished singing of an Aretha Franklin or a Whitney Houston. Helen Folasade Adu helped redefine urban soul when, as Sade, the Nigerian-born Londoner burst onto the scene in the mid-'80s with her multi-platinum debut album Diamond Life. Engineer and producer Mike Pela describes the organic recording process that produced one of the singer's most memorable hits. Sade's ice-cool vocals and sophisticated, jazz-tinged instrumentation defined a new kind of soul music for the '80s. Sade, plus a selection of percussion, photographed in the Power Plant in 1985.
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