Lovers Rock

This album will insinuate its way into your life like a woman, or man, you thought you barely liked but later realised you loved all along. Bearing in mind Sade's history as a purveyor of music to make love to, the title may make this album seem like we're in predictable territory. Not so. Tracks like 'Somebody Already Broke My Heart' give the lie to that relatively facile reading of her art. This lady is looking for "a saviour." To fuck or to pray to? Who cares? To Sade both gestures, it seems, come from the same impulse.

And so, from the seductively mellow opening song, 'By Your Side', to the final cut, 'It's Only Love That Gets You Through', this album definitely is a hymn to love. Indeed, ‘Slave Song’, one of its most glorious tracks – maybe even the soul of Lovers Rock – is nothing less than a prayer.

Lovers Rock weaves a finely-balanced musical fabric. And one made all the more engrossing as a result of its dark underbelly. Sade Adu, like many romantics of forty, would appear to have been more than humbled by love. 'Broken To Rise Again' might be a more appropriate phrase.

Likewise, Sade seems to have been wounded by some of society's sicker tendencies – such as the racism she addresses in 'Immigrant'. As she says "coming from where he did/He was turned away from/Every door like Joseph/To even the toughest among us/That would be too much." See what I mean about the religious connotations underpinning this album?

On Lovers Rock, Sade gets down on her knees and delivers, quietly and truthfully, a sublime album.

Amen to that.