Emeli Sande
Emeli Sande
Adele Emily Sandé, better known as Emeli Sandé, is a Scottish recording artist and songwriter. She first became prominent after she featured on the track "Diamond Rings" by the rapper Chipmunk. It was their first top 10 single on the UK Singles Chart. In 2010, she featured on "Never Be Your Woman" by the rapper Wiley, which was another top ten hit. In 2012, she received the Brit Awards Critics' Choice Award...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionR&B Singer
Date of Birth10 March 1987
CitySunderland, England
I wasn't intentionally trying to create my own path or be original, it was just I needed to say certain things and I needed to express myself, and that's how it came out.
Any song I have to work on longer than a day, I just leave it. It's not gonna work. Everything that's good is really instant.
I'd be smiling if I wasn't so desperate. I'd be patient if I had the time.
The focus is on singer/songwriters now rather than huge shows. I mean, of course there's always a place for that too.
I was so shy and so quiet, and the only time I had my own voice and I could really connect with people was when I was singing or on stage.
From when I was a kid I wanted to write. It was so important to me that I was writing my own material.
I was very quiet until I got at the piano, and weekends, lunch breaks, after school, before school, I was just making music.
Melody is the first thing that comes to me when I'm songwriting. I learned piano classically first, and then I went into soul, and so melody has always been the first. It's so important.
If I was singing like somebody else, then it was almost like I was expressing myself like somebody else. So it was always a very original thing for me. It's my voice, it's my diary, it's the way I connect with people.
I wanted to find a way to speak for people. It was important for me, because so many people spoke for me when I was a kid and made me feel less invisible, and I wanted kids or whoever is listening to my music not to feel so voiceless.
People that come to my shows are definitely people that feel outsiders. They feel like I don't feel sexy, I don't feel like - I can't go out every night on Friday and I can't connect to that, and I feel so much pressure to do that.
Sometimes you feel like a very small drop in this huge ocean.
Just thinking of all the things I'd done getting there and everything I've sacrificed to do so. But what's happening now makes it worth it.
'Clown' was written when I couldn't find anyone who believed in me as an artist. Maybe those labels will think twice next time a young songwriter comes along.