At her peak, Adu, who is now 65, also explored acting, making her film debut in 1986’s Absolute Beginners, and lending her vocals to the movie’s soundtrack.
So what has Sade Adu been up to in the years since?
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Sade Adu prioritised her personal life
While fans of Sade would have loved to see more albums and concerts from the band over the last four decades, Adu chose to “prioritise her personal life over her professional career”, according to the band’s website.
In 1989, she married Spanish filmmaker Carlos Scola Pliego. The couple moved from London to Madrid, but their relationship was a turbulent one, according to The Fader. The pair broke up shortly before Sade began making 1992 album, Love Deluxe.
Adu returned to London – and the recording studio. She began dating Bob Morgan, a reggae music producer, and moved briefly to the Caribbean to live with him. In 1996, the couple had a baby – Adu’s only child.
She took a break to focus on being a mum
After the birth of her child, Izaak Theo Adu – who in October 2016 came out as a trans man – Sade Adu took a well-deserved break, with her band going on hiatus. Adu and the band then reunited in 1999, releasing Lovers Rock in 2000 after eight years without a new album. They would go on to release only one more studio album, 2010’s Soldier of Love.
Since then, Sade has released just two songs: one each for the soundtracks to the movies A Wrinkle in Time and Widows, both of which came out in 2018.
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What is Sade Adu up to now?
The band has been mostly quiet since its last album in 2010. However, fans were treated to the 2020 release of a box set featuring remastered versions of all six Sade albums to date. At the time, the band were meeting at Adu’s home in Gloucestershire in southwest England, where it was working on finishing its seventh album and contemplating a return to touring after a decade, per GQ.
There have also been sporadic reports of the band being back in the studio – on the verge of releasing new music – in the years since, but so far Sade’s long-awaited seventh album and the accompanying tour have yet to materialise.
Updates on Adu herself, meanwhile, come primarily via her son Izaak. Now a model signed to Next Management, he has shared his heartfelt gratitude for his mum’s support during his gender transition. “Thank you for staying by my side these past six months, mumma. Thank you for fighting with me to complete the man I am,” Izaak wrote in an Instagram post in September 2019, after undergoing gender reassignment surgery and spending half a year in recovery, per British media.