It always confuses people a little when a band is named after its lead singer, and often it leads to that singer shedding other members and essentially turning it into the solo project some mistook it for, like Alice Cooper or Marilyn Manson. But while people often conflate the British band Sade with their eponymous singer, Sade Adu, they're very much a band, with the same core quartet recording and performing together since 1982: Adu, bassist Paul S. Denman, keyboardist Andrew Hale, and guitarist/saxophonist Stuart Matthewman, who's also known for co-writing and co-producing a significant chunk of Maxwell's catalog. Still, the relative anonymity of the instrumentalist members of Sade is at least somewhat by design -- after all, Sade Adu's face, and her face alone, is on the cover of all 6 of their albums. 

Last month, Sade released This Far, a vinyl box set of all the band's albums, and I feel like it's sort of a culminating moment of the critical reevaluation of Sade over the last decade or two. They've been a huge multiplatinum act for their entire existence, but I think their smooth sensual sound and quiet ubiquity have made it easy to underestimate their creativity or influence on R&B, or simply not give them much thought at all. And at this point, there's probably few mainstream acts whose stock has risen more in the last decade, especially without a new full-length album in that time. 

Sade deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Cherry Pie

2. Frankie's First Affair

3. I Will Be Your Friend

4. Jezebel

5. Maureen

6. Fear

7. I Never Thought I'd See The Day

8. Give It Up

9. Clean Heart

10. Pearls

11. Like A Tattoo

12. Bullet Proof Soul

13. The Sweetest Gift

14. Lovers Rock

15. Immigrant

16. Bring Me Home

17. Morning Bird

18. Long Hard Road
19. I Would Never Have Guessed

Listening to their music chronologically like this, it's impressive how consistent Sade's sound has been. There are certainly some production touches on the early albums that feel pretty '80s, but not nearly as dated as most R&B and downtempo pop of the era. And the albums since the '90s introduce some slightly hip hop-influenced breakbeat-style rhythm tracks, but it also manages to stay within the sophisticated, placidly smoldering Sade aesthetic. Still, they do vary tempo and mood a bit more on these albums than I think they get credit for, and some songs "Maureen" are a bit livelier than all but a couple of their hits. "Jezebel" is probably the most famous Sade song that wasn't a single, a live staple that appeared on the band's highest selling compilation, 1994's The Best Of Sade, alongside other album tracks "Pearls" and "Like A Tattoo." And I included one of the newly recorded songs from a later compilation, 2011's The Ultimate Collection.