It was a long-sleeved white tunic and it looked lacy… She’s German and has been making my clothes for about five years.ĪLETTI: Tell me about what you were wearing at Radio City. I don’t like fashion, but I do like clothes.ĪLETTI : I was struck by what you were wearing onstage at Radio City Music Hall. I find it a bit distasteful and have never really been part of that.ĪLETTI : But your image is very fashionable. I think it’s far more cutthroat than the music business. I don’t like the way it works, the way buyers have so much power over everything - who’s their darling this week and so forth. SADE: I don’t really like the fashion industry, to be honest with you. It was quite young and casual.ĪLETTI : In some of your comments in other interviews, you seem to object to being typed as a cool fashion icon. There was one other club where they played really brilliant music, and you could safely go there.

They’d think, these young girls, they can’t have come here to listen to the music they’ve come to look for the men - and we had come to listen to the music. Unfortunately, you’d get accosted by the airmen, so I didn’t go there very regularly. There was an American air base there, and they had all the good imported records. SADE: Yeah, to go to a decent club, we used to go about 14 miles away, to a town called Ipswich. Otherwise, I would have been dependent on public transport, which would have been impossible, since there was practically none. My brother was three years older, and when he was 17, he started to drive, so he could take me places.

I suppose I started going out to dance when I was 14 or 15. Eventually my brother bought a record player. SADE: It’s not too bad, but we didn’t have a record player. “Whe-e-e-e-ere is love?” And we had Dinah Washington’s Greatest Hits and Sinatra and Basie.ĪLETTI : Well, it’s not as bad as it could have been. We had three records in the house when we were young: the soundtrack to Oliver.

I think maybe because we were quite deprived of music, when my brother and I grew up and discovered it, we really got excited by it. In 1988, after three sold-out nights at Radio City Music Hall, the elusive pop singer sat down with writer Vince Aletti for our 1988 November issue. In honor of Lady Sade’s birthday, we revisit the best moments from her Interview cover story, where she opens up about her love for dancing, the tabloids, Prince, and why she “would never go to the Limelight.” The band found success with the instant classic 1984’s “Smooth Operator,” turning Sade herself into a music superstar and a reluctant fashion icon. In her early days she went to fashion school in London, had a brief career as a model, and eventually formed the band Sade. Born to a British mother and Nigerian father, the songstress never intended to become a music icon. Today, Folasade Helen Adu, the artist better known as Sade, turns 60.

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