SADE : It’s Cool With Her to Stay Locked in a Groove

Fans have been waiting four years for Sade’s fourth album, “Love Deluxe” (see review, Page 57), but to judge solely by the sound of the collection, it’s as if hardly a minute had passed. No significant shifts here: The same low-key vocals from singer Sade Adu; the same unobtrusive “quiet storm” from her longtime sax-bass-keyboards trio; more late-night, bottom-heavy ballads; no topical flirtations with the latest musical technology.

“No,” says Adu, 33, turning the issue around. “I don’t know--do other people do that?”

Tend to adopt stylistic changes between albums? Well, actually, yes.

“I think it’s probably partly because--although I’m the more prominent one--there are four of us in this band,” Adu says. With a lot of singers, she says, “whoever the best drummer is to play for a dance track, you get him in, and then get another drummer on a ballad. Whereas it’s the same ingredients each time we make an album.”

Not that fans complain about the consistency. Each of Sade’s previous albums has gone multi-platinum in the States. Part of the allure is her enduring coolness --a trait the London native has maintained in the face of so many pop crooners outbelting one another. Call her the anti-Bolton.

Still, the new album includes at least one song that might surprise those who consider Sade a purely romantic act--”Pearls,” in which Adu contrasts her lucky lot in life with that of a Somalian.

“Maybe our songs that have been successful on radio in the past have been love songs, but really, the albums have never been strictly love-themed,” she insists. “They’ve been much more about life. Actually there are some quite hard, heavy things going on in the songs, but all some people see is the romantic, dreamy part.”

And inasmuch as Sade is seen in the torchy tradition of Billie Holiday, people have historically objectified their female singers as glamorous love-struck sufferers.

“Yeah. That’s nice, though. I like that. I like to suffer,” she confesses, laughing. “But there’s more going on than that.”