Sometimes snubbed as "middle of the road," Sade did keep her soul under control on 1984's Diamond Life. There's the elegiac "Sally," as well as the curiously empathetic "Frankie's First Affair," in which a smooth operator gets his emotional comeuppance. And even the still-ubiquitous, samba-laced "Smooth Operator" is closer to a cautionary tale from a too-wise young woman than an actual revelation of whatever may have been Helen Folasade Adu's blues.

Finally, though, with the swinging, wrenching "Cherry Pie" (and, to a lesser extent, with the torchy "Your Love Is King"), Sade sets her elastic, evocative alto free. She's the queen of going thick and rich with her voice, but the way Sade flings out "You were the only one/You were the only one" over attitudinal percussion is intoxicating and forceful, and the band (Stewart Matthewman, Paul Denman, Andrew Hale, Paul Cooke) must have known it: At almost six and a half minutes, "Cherry Pie" is the longest and best song on Diamond Life.

If Sade hadn't rocked it so proudly, girls such as Alicia Keys and Erykah Badu and male crooners including Maxwell (whom Matthewman ushered into the limelight) and Eric Benet would have had less to feed their artistic selves. Twenty years later, Sade's Diamond Life has lost none of its blue bling-bling.

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DANYEL SMITH

(Posted: Mar 10, 2004)