There are very few voices that stop people in their tracks. Sade Adu is one of them. Her breathy understated alto is a slowly seductive force. I first heard this song while my mom was cleaning the house. We had just moved from the third floor of 71 Center Street to the first floor. My mom would turn the radio to 92 Pro-FM and sing along while she picked up our latest mess. My sister, Della and I were in elementary school (me second grade and Dela was in first) and my mother was attending community college while my stepfather worked in the kitchen at the Veterans Hospital.
During the summer of the Diamond Life album a new channel called V66, a local version of MTV. There began my obsession with music. With a big black and white TV on the dresser in our room Dela and I would wait for our favorite videos to be played. The Smooth Operator video was our favorite. To two little black girls, Sade represented breathtaking beauty; she was like a doll that came to life. At the time, we were too young to understand what the song or video was about. All we knew was that we wanted to emulate this beauty and her voice. With our hairbrushes in hand we would sing the words (or what we thought the words were). Looking back I’m sure my mom got a kick out of these impromptu concerts and from these concerts we realized two things Dela could sing and well I couldn’t and my mom signed up to join the children’s choir at church. Although choir rehearsals and church service had its own drama, Sade allowed Dela and me to be and even feel like divas even if our diva-hood was confined to our bedroom at 71 Center Street.
