Chartsweep 1984: Sade's "When Am I Going To Make A Living"
by Micha Valentine
Sade - “When Am I Going To Make A Living”
Release Date: May 14th, 1984 (via Epic Records)
Explicit information and expression isn't a guarantee of commitment in the eyes of the beholder. Quiet as kept, we are all obliged to our impressions often forged and imposed without our consent to which we truly have no control over. To right those ships that have fallen astray takes time and effort more taxing and furthermore too brutal to maintain. In the case of Sade Adu and her bandmates, this issue has plagued them for 35 years or more as their stardom encapsulates them into a limiting memory like so much amber. Nobody remembers who they really were or are because nobody needs that complex reality (much like Sade learned very early her audience likewise didn't need or deserve access to her realities) and instead we have this half-life that has endured for so many decades.
Sade's politics are at best, abstracted in many ways. We know very little about her, or the band's alignments; they're on record as having been big admirers of Crass but are probably best known for being one of the many participants in Live Aid (at that point insanely early in their career). Nearly every album has a handful of songs concerning poverty, racism or war (primarily in Africa, which makes sense given Adu's Nigerian heritage), yet the general understanding of the band relies on supper club smoothness and crystalline sheen. Smooth Operator might've been only the third of the band's twenty-five singles, but it's become the hit that's defined them in spite of moving past the lounge jazz/soul vibes into a territory all their own; a blend of world music and pop that has all the spacious kosmische of Roxy Music's Avalon or Massive Attack's Mezzanine but avoids the perception of experimentalism. Sade and her team didn't seek to be recognized as punks in suits a la your Blue Rondo A La Turks or ABCs, and as such their allegiances feel ignored at the expense of the band's true potency for the sake of their (still impeccable) powers of romantic evocation.
When Am I Going To Make A Living is the second single from the band (not only from their iconic '84 debut Diamond Life but point-blank). It showcases a different band altogether, the one we collectively disregard in our selective memory but has always remained. In America, Sade were just the rare sort of British R&B act that managed to make an impact outside of their nation in the company of Loose Ends or Brand New Heavies. Such is the problem with the negotiation of international communique in pop, especially with the idea of a 'Black England'. To this day African-Americans often meet their English kinfolk of the diaspora with skepticism and hesitance, as if they were just as alien to their charts as white Brits such as David Bowie or Mick Hucknall. Any sort of subtle navigation of the British music scene is inherently lost for better or worse, and as such Sade were taken at face value.
In England, their peers were Paul Weller's The Style Council and Everything But The Girl. The latter's front-woman, Tracey Thorn, has gone on to praise Sade in recent years and point to their similarities. Yes they were both clearly infatuated with jazz sophistication, shared a common producer in Robin Millar (even sharing the same studio at times) and featured weathered-sounding front-women with powerful contraltos. But there was the political core at the heart of both their groups that radiated a specific intensity and steely survey of the world. Ironically, when EBTG crossed over to America with the Balearic mourning cry of Missing, they too only managed to be embraced by Americans while singing not of the political, but the personal. Fitting that they would be kin on so many levels, yet even in England Sade's parallels to the recognizably feminist and class critical act expected of a former Marine girl would never be granted to the woman who was a former squatter and punk-era fashionista.
Adu and her compatriots in principal songwriter/guitarist/saxophonist Stewart Matthewman & Co. were not the same as your Deacon Blues or your Hue & Crys, even if that mentality was so similar. The band of Matthewman, bassist Paul Denman and drummer Andrew Hale were impeccably tight with the majority of them having done time in a large ensemble named Pride. R&B wasn't an affectation of the ideals of pop learned from a Scritti Political Rhetorics 101 handbook to try and meet the 'proles' on their terms, no no no. This was a life and a Labour all its own, a trade by which they knew the value of their work and the people to which they represented and spoke for, not to. Yes, Make A Living was clearly made in the shadow of Thatcherism; but the song's potency has hardly dulled even in this day where teens on twitter plea for the undoing of a capitalism they've barely been taught to comprehend or even managed to truly live against. To say nothing of the tightness of the band themselves, who slip through a groove equal parts soul and reggae that'd make icons like Curtis Mayfield and Bob Marley nod in approval while Adu belts the warning that “They'll waste your body and soul if you allow them to” with equal measures of heeding danger and demonstrating resilience. Sade Adu might've looked like a 80s update of Lena Horne but she was ready to be as fierce as a maiden out of Ingrid Sinclair's Flame for the sake of justice. You hear her and her comrades chant “We're hungry but we won't give in!” and one feels ready to march.
There’s little to no harm in the recognition of Sade as one of the most gracefully enduring acts of the 80s with even (relatively) recent albums as 2012's Soldier Of Love. But it's a failed understanding that cannot recon with the dimensions of capability for one of the few self-contained R&B collaborations. Sade Adu has worked with the same principal team to realize her vision of music for nearly four decades now, a sort of mastery of adaptability that even the likes of recognized greats like Michael Jackson, Prince or Stevie Wonder couldn't attest to. When Am I Going To Make A Living isn't an outlier in such a field, and it should be recognized similarly for her and the band's vision of pop. Is it a crime that deep beneath the glamour chic we never truly observe what stirs the heart that beats beneath?