Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
I want to give people a refuge from darkness
Emeli Sandé tells LUCY MAPSTONE why her music is now all about channelling a real spirit of euphoria
IT’S perhaps hard to believe, but Emeli Sandé almost quit making music a while back over fears that people had had enough of her. With a degree in neuroscience under her belt, the singer-songwriter nearly stepped out of the spotlight to focus on her more academic side after becoming one of the UK’s brightest young artists.
“I always like to keep life moving and fluid, and I didn’t know if people wanted to hear more music from me because they’d seen me everywhere,” she says.
“I kind of got the impression that maybe it’s time for me to try another profession.”
Shrugging, she adds: “There was a point I considered it... but I’m happy I got over that.”
If you were around in 2012, there is no doubt you’ll have seen or heard Emeli at some point. Since her rise to fame a few years earlier, collaborating with the likes of rappers Chipmunk, Wiley and
Professor Green and producer Naughty Boy, 2012 was the year that things skyrocketed.
Having won the Critics’ Choice Award at the Brits, and then the British female solo artist gong, her debut album Our Version Of Events topped the charts, jumping back and forth to number one throughout the year. The album shifted more than
1.3 million copies in the UK alone by the end of the year, making it the biggestselling record of 2012.
She was also almost a permanent presence thanks to her performances at both the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.
Things were going incredibly well for this rising star, and in 2016 her second album Long Live The Angels peaked at number two, her trajectory not slowing down despite the feelings that she had been overexposed early on in her career.
Perhaps not wanting to seem ungrateful for her achievements thus far, Emeli is obviously overwhelmed and humbled by the triumphs she has had, but she does acknowledge that they came at a cost.
Describing herself as an “introvert” – despite her remarkable voice and power to entertain an arena full of people, or a global audience of millions – the 32-yearold admits that she struggled with the level of fame that came as part of the package.
“I’m naturally quite a quiet person, and music has always been my voice – that’s when I give myself full licence to be as loud and dramatic as possible,” she says.
Emeli says that at the age of around 27, she was at a “dramatic crossroads” in her life having worked tirelessly through her early 20s. She needed a bit of a break, she says, because she had not had a chance to self-reflect.
Although she does not specifically mention it, it was around this time she divorced her partner of 10 years and her husband of two, Adam Gouraguine.
She says: “It was around then that I really felt a need to figure out my identity. That happens for a lot of people around that age.”
Long Live The Angels dealt with her personal battles and her divorce in part, but Emeli has really put her newfound confidence and feelings of being more grounded into her third record, Real Life.
The record was also partly inspired by a trip to Zambia to meet her father’s family, helping her to understand her mixed race heritage better than she ever did before.
Having grown up in a tiny village in Aberdeenshire, where she admits she internalised feelings of being marginalised, it was a thoroughly ‘transformational’ exercise that helped her to understand what it means to be a black woman.
“The main themes on the album are freedom and survival, and I wanted the message of love to run throughout every song,” she explains.
“I feel like each one really reflects me now as a woman, as an adult, and I’ve been very honest and transparent with the lyrics because I want people to truly relate to it and for there to be no façade in the music.
“That’s the only way you can truly connect with the listeners. The making of the album came at a point in my life where I really felt like, ‘Wow I’m really getting to know myself. I’m really beginning to accept and love myself in a new way that I’ve never felt before’.”
As well as hoping for the record to reach people who have ever felt disenfranchised and to help them feel uplifted, Emeli says she hopes it can serve as a kind of tonic to the current political and societal unease.
“I really wanted it to be uplifting,” she notes. “Sometimes the air and the atmosphere feels very polluted and our politics, for one, is crazy. There’s a lot of darkness around, I believe, right now, and I just think people need a bit of refuge.
“Music was always my refuge. Growing up, if I felt invisible, music would make me feel like a giant and there’s a real euphoria with music.
“I really wanted to try and channel that.”
■ Emeli Sandé’s album Real Life is out now.
I’m naturally a quiet person and music has always been my voice – that’s when I’m as loud and dramatic as possible Emeli Sandé on growing up