Love Deluxe is the fourth studio album by English bandSade, released byEpic Records in October 1992 in the United Kingdom and November 1992 in the United States. It differs from Sade'sprevious three albums by using modernised recording and production techniques.Love Deluxe features a "lush" aesthetic and lyrics about the complexities of love and loss.
Love Deluxe peaked in the top ten of several countries and received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its performances, sound and themes. It appears in several lists of the best albums of the 1990s and of all-time, includingRolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" andApple Music's "100 Best Albums".
During 1992, the members of Sade –Sade Adu,Stuart Matthewman,Paul Denman, and Andrew Hale – re-entered the studio after a break following the supporting tour for their previous albumStronger Than Pride (1988). The band worked onLove Deluxe for four months. Adu explained that the album's title comes from her concept of love: "The idea is that it's one of the few luxury things that you can't buy," she said in an interview at the time of the album's release. "You can buy any kind of love but you can't get love deluxe." On the songwriting process, she added: "I collect ideas in my head all the time. The things that most depress you are often the things that you write about."[1]
Love Deluxe marks a shift in Sade's signature sound, straying from their previous live instrumentation – notably almost no live drumming – in favour of a modernised and programmed aesthetic with "lush" production.[2][3][1][4] The album primarily blends theR&B,[5]ambient,[6][7] andcool jazz genres.[8]
Critics noted the "menacing" andmetal-like riffs on the opening track, "No Ordinary Love". Track two, "Feel No Pain", lyrically depicts unemployment woes. Notes ofdeep house appear on track three, "I Couldn't Love You More". Track four, "Like a Tattoo", was inspired by the story of a war veteran Adu met in aManhattan bar. "Kiss of Life", track five, was compared to a jazzyMotown groove.Saxophone instrumentation "fills the margins" on track eight, "Bullet Proof Soul".[2][3][1][9]
Pitchfork writer Ivy Nelson described the sound ofLove Deluxe as swelling with "darkness", comparing the "yawn and lurch" of its programmed beats to the burgeoningtrip hop genre and noting itsart pop andchill-out elements.[10] "The band plays with an almost fluid dynamism, audible in the oceanic churn of Matthewman's guitar on 'No Ordinary Love,' or in the way Hale's synth work tends to add long, drowsy auras to his piano chords," Nelson says. "The distance between snare hits on songs like 'No Ordinary Love' and 'Cherish the Day' seems to open a space in which lushness and dread merge."[1]
Love Deluxe was released in the United Kingdom on 26 October 1992, and in the United States on 3 November 1992; both releases were handled byEpic Records.[11][12] Following its release, the band had a seven-year hiatus, during which Adu came under media scrutiny with rumours of depression and addiction and later gave birth to her first child.[13] During this time, Matthewman, Denman, and Hale pursued other projects and formed the bandSweetback, which released a self-titled album in 1996. Matthewman also provided instrumentation and production work for the first two albums by American R&B singerMaxwell.[14]
In a contemporary review forThe Village Voice, music criticRobert Christgau felt that half ofLove Deluxe cannot qualify with Sade's most memorable songs and particularly panned the lyric about aSomali woman who "hurts like brand-new shoes" in the song "Pearls".[22]Los Angeles Times journalist Dennis Hunt said that while some songs "make good romantic background music", others resemble lesser imitations of "Enya's ultra-soothing mood music."[17] Amy Linden ofEntertainment Weekly stated that the album "surges with emotion, but the mostly lush ambient music onLove Deluxe is low on the oomph meter."[16]James T. Jones IV was more enthusiastic inUSA Today, commenting that it "may frustrate those who want to hear something truly different" from Sade, but would satisfy fans with its "quasi-jazz moods, light Afro-Latin undercurrents and minimalist arrangements".[21] Writing forNME,David Quantick foundLove Deluxe not "much different" from Sade's previous work, yet still "a fine album" having "proper tunes and neat arrangements", and "the soul of subtlety."[18] InRolling Stone, Mark Coleman deemed Adu an "exacting" lyricist andLove Deluxe an "artfully arranged and tastefully executed album" that "repays the time it takes to grow on you."[23]
Retrospectively,AllMusic'sRon Wynn wrote thatLove Deluxe "marked a return to the detachedcool jazz backing and even icier vocals that madeher debut album a sensation" with an "urbane" sound.[15] Chris Roberts ofUncut viewed it as a culmination of Sade's increasingly minimalist musical direction, remarking that "byLove Deluxe, the understatement had attainedZen".[20] In the 2004Rolling Stone Album Guide, Roni Sarig noted that it introduced "subtle divergences" to Sade's standard style, with "No Ordinary Love" in particular pointing to the band's later shift "toward the sleeker, more digital sound of modern British pop."[9] Ivy Nelson highlighted the "monolithic" nature and "blissful abstraction" of the album's sound, as well as its "timeless expressions of desire and heartache", in a 2017 review forPitchfork.[1]
Love Deluxe peaked at number 10 on theUK Albums Chart,[24] and was certified gold by theBritish Phonographic Industry (BPI) on 1 June 1993.[25] In the United States, the album peaked at number three on theBillboard 200,[26] and as of May 2003, it had sold 3.4 million copies.[27] TheRecording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified it four-times platinum on 9 November 1994, denoting shipments in excess of four million copies.[28] The album was also commercially successful elsewhere, reaching number one in France and the top 10 in Belgium, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.[29][30][31][32] By April 1993, the album had sold three million copies worldwide, including 220,000 copies in Italy.[33]
* Sales figures based on certification alone. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. ‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone.
^abc"The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s".Pitchfork. 28 September 2022. Retrieved26 April 2023....Love Deluxe functioned as a bridge between the art pop scene of the previous decade and the trip-hop of the next... [it] prefigured the chilled-out turn the British music scene would take in the years to come.
^Cite error: The named referenceLinden2 was invoked but never defined (see thehelp page).
^Kylene, Jazmin; Soormally, Sabrina; Soetan, Sope; Hussain, Shahzaib; Lamond, Ana (6 August 2024)."Sade's 20 Best Songs – The CLASH Verdict".Clash. Retrieved15 July 2025....the atmospheric ambient trips of magnum opus 'Love Deluxe'...
^Cite error: The named referenceWynn2 was invoked but never defined (see thehelp page).
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