From an unseen hallway, Sade's mournful voice floats into the TV studio like a ghost passing through a wall. She's singing these words, "I'm the king of sorrow..." The vocalist is backstage at HBO's comedy-interview program the Chris Rock Show. She's just wrapped up rehearsals for her appearance on the program to promote Lovers Rock (Epic), her first CD of new music in eight years. That's a lifetime in pop: time enough for the Seattle rock scene to have exploded like a supernova and to have collapsed like a white dwarf, time enough for Britney Spears to have gone from an innocent grade schooler to a stripteasing teen queen, time enough for the rap-rock genre to have bulked up its market muscle like a steroid-popping Bulgarian weight lifter. Time has passed, but it hasn't passed Sade by. Even when she's singing sad songs, even when she's just stretching her voice, she sounds as alluring as ever: "I'm crying everyone's tears..."
A few moments later, Sade slips into a small dressing room. She politely asks the reporter who is with her for permission to light a cigarette and then proceeds to chain-smoke for the duration of the interview. She smiles readily and laughs often, but something soft and vulnerable in her seems to clench reflexively--like a baby's fist around an adult's finger--when personal questions are raised. She exhales anxious gray smoke. She's not the interview type.
It's fashionable to be a press-shy celebrity--to bemoan the loss of one's privacy while simultaneously courting the cameras at movie premieres and fashion shows. But Sade comes by her press shyness honestly. On the Chris Rock Show, she just sings her song and never says a word. Like a comet making its celestial rounds, she appears in the star-studded celebrity heavens infrequently and almost only when she has new songs to perform.
This time around, Sade, 41, has other things on her mind besides music. In her songs and videos--hits like Smooth Operator, Your Love Is King and Kiss of Life--she evokes a world of romance and longing, of continent hopping and heart breaking. Her lyrics mirror her life. Since the release of her last CD, the elegant Love Deluxe (1992), Sade has divorced Spanish filmmaker Carlos Scola, taken up with Jamaican record producer Bob Morgan and, with Morgan, had her first child, Ila, now 4. Says Sade: "My happiest moment was definitely when I was in the hospital holding Ila. I just looked at her, and I wanted the moment to go on forever."
Sade has also encountered drama outside her romantic life. In 1998 a judge in Kingston, Jamaica, ordered an arrest warrant for Sade after she failed to appear at a hearing on reckless-driving charges. "It wasn't really a traffic incident, to be honest," says Sade, who claims that a Jamaican policeman tried to pressure her into giving him a bribe. "It got blown into some incredible farcical event." In order to avoid arrest, Sade says she plans never to return to the island.