247. Sade, "Love Deluxe"

 

I feel like I have to tread lightly here.  After yesterday's blast of pop-punk energy, this restrained, quiet album is a radical change of pace, but I very much want to consider it on its own merits and not be influenced by what I've just been listening to.

So I've tried very hard to do that, and to think about it in isolation, but after two listens I can't escape the feeling that this album is slight; not just in the sense that musically it's very open and airy but also in the sense that there's not a ton going on.  I'm not sure what I'm missing that affords this album this (comparitively) lofty position.

The music is, I guess, jazz-pop?  It sounds like it's all drum machines, and that gives some of the songs a trip-hop feel, which I quite liked, but most of it is that kind of ethereal airy jazz/soul/R&B.  Some songs, like "Kiss of Life," really lean into the R&B, while a song like "Like a Tattoo" is so sparsely instrumented it resists categorization.  The only song I knew was "No Ordinary Love," the opener, where the dreamy verses get punctuated by the staccato read on the chorus.  A really pretty song.

Sade Adu, of course, has a beautiful voice that's the real center of the album.  She obviously is gifted at interpreting a song, but she also has a reediness that makes her voice more interesting.

Still, I have to confess I don't get it.  It's a perfectly fine album, the kind of thing you'd hear playing in the background at a swanky bar in the mid-90's, but I don't see it up here.  

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Sorry, no.