Graceful songstress Sade back with a new track

The reclusive singer is back from another long hiatus with a new track for an upcoming fantasy film

One of the world’s most iconic singers has returned to grace us with her soulful voice. Sade – she of the hits Smooth Operator, Cherish the Love and The Sweetest Taboo – has broken a long absence from the music scene with the release of a new song, Flower of the Universe, for the upcoming fantasy flick A Wrinkle in Time. The exciting news of Sade’s new track was announced on Twitter by Ava DuVernay, who directed the film starring Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon. “I never thought she’d say yes but asked anyway. She was kind and giving. A goddess. We began a journey together that I’ll never forget,” Ava said. The 59-year-old singer, who broke onto the music scene in 1984 with her hit debut album Diamond Life, is known for taking long breaks between records. Her previous release was 2010’s Soldier of Love and before that it was 2000’s Lover’s Rock. She was born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria. As a young child she moved to England and started a band in 1983. Sade is a shortened form of her middle name, Folasade, which her family have always called her. Sade has plenty of A-list fans ranging from Missy Elliot (“Smooth Operator is one of my favourite songs”), Brandy, Alicia Keys and Beyoncé (“for years I’ve turned to Sade for inspiration”) to rappers such as Kanye West, Rick Ross and Drake, who has two tattoos of her face on his rib cage. She’s reclusive and lives with her boyfriend, Ian Watts, a former Marine, in a stone cottage in the Cotswolds, UK. She has one child, a son named Izaak Theo (21), from her relationship with Jamaican music producer Bob Morgan. Izaak came out as transgender in 2016.