Pop music may be bigger than ever, but one of its richest wellsprings, soul, has all but evaporated. Though a few fine voices have kept the flame burning, most black American vocalists have set their sights on rock & roll or middle-of-the-road audiences. It's mighty hard to find any singers working in the Otis Redding tradition: raw, sweaty R&B steeped in the polarities of sex and religious devotion. No less a dying breed is the jazz chanteuse, whispering of heartbreak in a darkened lounge.
Into this vacuum have come two British female vocalists, each making her solo debut. Unlike such singers as Boy George or George Michael of Wham!, Sade and Alison Moyet show less affection for Tamla/Motown
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classics than for other, perhaps purer strains of black American music. Yet their approaches could not be more dissimilar. Sade, who was born in Nigeria, boasts a model's icy, soignée bearing, and her music is all pop-jazz finesse. Moyet is the blues-and-gospel-influenced bruiser, a wide-bodied belter who looks to sway hearts on strength, not style. Moyet clearly possesses the better voice – it's as emotionally immediate as Dusty Springfield's and as big as the great outdoors – but
"Alf" too often founders because of its disappointingly unimaginative arrangements.
Sade may lack Moyet's ability, but on Diamond Life she receives musical settings that are far more sympathetic, and the result is an album wonderfully redolent of black cocktail dresses, Scotch on the rocks and slow-dancing till dawn. Those Kinski lips, those almond eyes, the highest brow this side of Beldar the Conehead – it makes for an interesting look, but suggests a style-equals-substance approach. Even one of her band members admits that they asked Helen Folasade Adu (the daughter of a Nigerian father and a British mother) to front their outfit because she "looked like she could sing."
Her music turns out to be far from feckless, though. The surprise begins with "Smooth Operator," a silky samba whose opening is as sinuous as Steely Dan's "Do It Again." With its tasteful taps on the congas and its muted sax hook, "Smooth Operator" – like most of the other tracks, cowritten by Sade and Stuart Matthewman – is a perfect showcase for Sade's smoky, delicate voice. Her touch is light, unforced; she has acknowledged the fiery Nina Simone as one of her biggest influences, but to these ears she sounds more like Roberta Flack and at times recalls Lani Hall's hits with Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66.
Producer Robin Millar never makes Sade take on more than she can handle. Her songs are uniformly restrained, decorously dressed for a night on the town. The entreaties of "Hang On to Your Love" – "In heaven's name, why do you play these games?" – are languorously delivered, not cried out in anguish; hers isn't the voice of the heartbroken lover, but of the put-off sophisticate. In "Cherry Pie" (imagine a Prince song with that
