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Sade Adu and Tracy Chapman Sang About Our Inner Search for Peace, Love, and Light
An anniversary appreciation for the way they poured into us through music
Over three decades ago, Sade Adu and Tracy Chapman put out two separate albums, Stronger Than Pride and the eponymous Tracy Chapman. Their words contained the unspoken resentments and bone-deep blues of women whose voices had been silenced. It could only have been serendipitous fortune that saw a debut offering from a soulful child of Southern folk cross paths with the hushed jazz stirrings of a respected veteran because on the same day and in the same year, the two singer-songwriters echoed the words of women who had spent years swallowing their own tongues. In doing so, they gave discreet but recognizable melodies to the singular ways Black women are expected to maneuver love’s imperfections—imperfections that demand a loyalty that is met with neglect and intimate embraces that lack tenderness. For women who love hard, these two albums offered soothing ointments for the festering and inherited ailments of living and loving as a hungry Black woman.
Adu and Chapman occupy two distinct spaces in the pop culture landscape as artists whose work is the structural foundation of most contemporary forays into jazz-tinged soul yet whose own lives have remained far removed from the unforgiving glare of public opinion. Maybe it’s because both came into their creative pockets during a time when visibility wasn’t as mandatory for success as it is today. Outside of speculation and half-truths, they have succeeded in keeping an obvious and fierce hold on their intimate lives, choosing to live most publicly through the subtext and movements of their lyrics.
When Chapman released her debut, she placed 11 songs whose themes traversed through feelings of guilt, rage, frustration, and discouragement tied together with a pointed urgency. On “Why,” “Talkin ‘Bout a Revolution,” and “Across the Lines,” she is loud and insistent, her words spilling over observations on anti-Black violence, oppressive social structures, and the hypocrisy of global powers masquerading as peacekeepers. These songs focus on the collective responsibility to care for others not as we do for ourselves but how we wish for those we love, and they are almost anthemic…
