Next up, an album I bought when first released whilst still at college. This debut album was to launch the career of the incredible Helen Folasade Adu CBE, better know to us all as Sade Adu or simply Sade. The album not only met with critical acclaim but was to become a incredible commercial success achieving sales of over 10 million going 4 x Platinum in the UK, US and Australia while only managing 2 x Platinum in Canada, France and Switzerland and Gold in Spain along with a decent 300,000 copies in Brazil and 150,000 copies in Japan !
The album was recorded prior to signing a record deal, the group recorded Diamond Life in six weeks. It was recorded at Power Plant Studios in London. After cutting the proposed singles "Smooth Operator" and "Your Love Is King", the first album track recorded was "Sally", a song about the Salvation Army. During recording the band worked collectively on the musical direction, rehearsing each song in detail and then recording it. The song "When Am I Going to Make a Living" was started by Sade on the back of a cleaning ticket after she picked her clothes up from the cleaners. She had no money and she wrote down, "When Am I Going to Make a Living".
Producer Robin Millar met the band in 1983, and the band members had never worked in a professional studio and only had demos and recordings from the BBC studios and EMI publishing studios. Millar booked a week's worth of studio time and noted that the limitations of recording before computers had an impact upon the sound. "We used a real piano and a Fender Rhodes piano, painstakingly synching them up." They recorded 15 songs, all written by Adu and members of the group, except "Smooth Operator" written exclusively by Adu and Ray St.John. They also recorded a cover version of " Why Can't We Live Together" (1972) by Timmy Thomas.
For the recording of "Cherry Pie", the band had no mixing desks with automation; each member had their job of putting a bit of echo, delay, or changing a level. Millar would then edit between the different mixes. Speaking about this Stuart Matthewman said, "Very often, we would have six people at the mixing desk at the same time."
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