Sade — “By Your Side”

This week’s episode is all about comfort. It’s about being remembered and what better person to commemorate that feeling with than the person whose music doesn’t seem to age- Sade. Sade came out with “By Your Side” after disappearing with no explanation for 8 years because she felt that was best for her. That quiet confidence lends itself to making some of the, in Rob’s words, horniest music imaginable, and the world is better for it. Finally, he is joined by Danyel Smith who explains how Sade laid the groundwork for artists like Rihanna to be the ultimate cool girl and how younger generations are still discovering Sade. (00:00) Intro: Let’s remember some guys (28:19) This week’s song: “By Your Side” by Sade (31:46) Pride, “Smooth Operator,” and ‘Diamond Life’ (42:50) The legacy of Quiet Storm (49:25) Sade’s public silences and ever-growing myth (58:01) “By Your Side” and Sade’s comforting presence (01:07:19) Interview with Danyel Smith (01:42:50) Outro Host: Rob Harvilla Producers: Olivia Crerie, Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, and Justin Sayles Guest: Danyel Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 1:01Speaker 01

  Hello friends, a quick note to say that 60 Songs is now available on YouTube. We made it. Success. That was easy. You can now watch full episodes of this show on YouTube and you can also check out our new social media accounts on Instagram and TikTok, all using the name 60 Songs That Explained the 90s. We have heard your cries of despair and confusion and we have therefore embraced various popular online platforms. So watch us on YouTube, check us out on TikTok and Instagram. I'm on Blue Sky and Twitter still under the name Harvilla, H A R V I L L A, but maybe stay out of it. I don't know. We'll put all the links for these in the episode description as well.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Thanks for listening and or watching and we'll see you on the internet.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  This episode of 60 Songs That Explained the 90s is presented to you by Nintendo. Some things stick around for a reason. A great song, a favorite movie, a game everyone wants another turn at. The Nintendo Switch 2 system fits right into that tradition. With two controllers included in games like Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bonanza, and EA Sports FC 26. There's something for every age and every mood. Whether you're at home or on the go, it's easy to keep the good stuff in rotation. Learn more at Nintendo.com/NintendoSwitch2. Games and systems sold separately. Games rated E to E10 plus.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  People often ask me, they say, Rob, what is your single greatest professional accomplishment? No one has ever asked me that. And what I always say is my greatest professional accomplishment, the highlight of my distinguished journalism career. My enduring legacy is that I was technically present for the birth of the Let's Remember Some Guys movement.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Here we have Walk of Life, the infectiously buoyant top 10 single from the English guitar rock band Dire Straits. From their blockbuster 1985 album Brothers in Arms. That's the big whoop Dire Straits album, the one with Money or Nothing on it. Dirt, dirt, na na na dirt, dirt, na dirt, na dirt, that one. Whereas Walk of Life is a brighter, poppier circus keyboard-driven bubblegum jam from Dire Straits with a wildly popular MTV music video that's mostly sports bloopers. Right? NBA stars wiping out, NFL stars biffing routine catches,

• 4:02Speaker 01

  baseball stars crashing full speed into each other whilst chasing pop flies, et cetera. Endearingly childish whimsy. Boys playing games poorly. Fantastic music video. I turned seven years old in 1985 and my four favorite things on earth, in no particular order, were MTV, sports, video games, and bloopers. Three out of four ain't bad.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  I just spent 20 minutes solid trying to figure out the names of the two NBA players in this one blooper in the Walk of Life video. It's a two-second clip, maybe. A guy on the Seattle Supersonics, he's got the ball and he fakes a shot. And a guy on the San Antonio Spurs tries to block the shot and he wildly leaps halfway across the court, full extension, and crashes out of bounds and off camera. John Sundvold, point guard for the Seattle Supersonics. He fakes the shot. Alvin Robertson, shooting guard for the San Antonio Spurs. He gets faked out of his shorts and jumps higher and farther than he's ever jumped in his whole life. Shake it off, Alvin. Good hustle.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  I am 85% sure about these names. There's me rewatching the Walk of Life video frame by frame to try and read the blurry name on the back of John Sundvold's jersey. There's me on BasketballReference.com looking up everyone who ever wore number 21 for the Spurs, including later Tim Duncan wore 21. It's fascinating. I spent 20 minutes on this activity. This is pointless. This is of the utmost importance. John Sundvold and Alvin Robertson. Remember those guys? That blooper isn't even all that amusing or remarkable

• 6:09Speaker 01

  within the context of the Walk of Life video. There's a better blooper just a few seconds later where two dudes, two fielders on the San Diego Padres, they collide super violently in the shallow outfield. Ouch, geez. Yeah, see, that clip is much more striking and memorable. And I do wonder who Fernando Gonzalez and Oscar Gamble. That looked like it hurt. I hoped Fernando and Oscar are okay. That one, it was way easier to get their names because both their names are faintly visible on their jerseys. I'm pretty good at this. Remember those guys?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  My favorite part of the song Walk of Life is the backing vocals in the chorus right there. The ahhhh. There's another violent baseball player collision at that exact point in the video, but it's two guys on the Yankees, I think, and I don't give a shit. I find that all music from the year 1985, rock, pop, soul, rap, whatever, anything at all from 1985 has this gauzy, backlit, idyllic, golden hour beer commercial glow to it, both in my ears and in my head. If that makes any sense. This is partly a matter of both technical pop music production style. 1985, you got hella reverb.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  You got super 80s gated drums, a la In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins. You got gourmet cheese ball synthesizers. Even Bruce Springsteen gets to sounding like a new wave guy. It's the 80s. It objectively, sonically sounds like the 80s, but it's also a matter of pure, uncut, overpowering nostalgia. The romanticized blurriness of youth, of childhood. Both musically and sentimentally, I can smell 1985 like a fart in a car. Is that from a movie? That's from a movie. Is that a line from a movie from 1985? That'd be awesome. Pump up the volume.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Christian Slater said that and pump up the volume, but that's 1990. That's too bad. Close though. Yeah, my permanent inner seven-year-old has a permanent, innocent, joyful visceral response to the ahhhh backing vocals on Walk of Life. And weirdly, I get the exact same nostalgic dopamine burst if you just start naming 1985 baseball players in my presence. Julio Franco, Ryan Sandberg, Lou Whitaker, Tony Gwynn, Dale Murphy, Wade Boggs, Kent Hrebek, Kirby Puckett. Remember those guys? Everyone remembers those guys. Those are superstars.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  A true Remember Some Guys experience has to involve guys you might not remember. Not totally obscure players. It's not an insult, but slightly less famous than Tony Gwynn. And yeah, the names of those superstar guys reverberate in my head to this day like tasty gated snare drums or even like heavily reverb'd super 80s hand claps.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  John Fogerty, "Centerfield," 1985. I could smell the 1985. Even the first 12 seconds of the "Centerfield" video, you get a different vintage baseball card on screen with every echoing hand clap. Roberto Clemente, Al Kaline, Carl Yastrzemski, Frank Robinson, Duke Snyder. Remember those guys? Of course you do. Those are older but even more famous superstar guys. "Centerfield" is a bright, poppy, ebullient beer commercial of a song that makes me nostalgic for 1985, but the song itself, or the video itself, anyway, is about how John Fogerty

• 10:32Speaker 01

  is nostalgic for 1955 or so. "Centerfield" is a 41-year-old song that makes me reminisce unabashedly about a guy who's unabashedly reminiscing about the Eisenhower administration.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Whole lot of Yankees action in the "Centerfield" video. I still don't give a shit. Also, lots of vintage, classic, black-and-white baseball action in this video. And yeah, man, I'll tell you what I won't be doing, is calculating how old that footage was in 1985 versus how old the "Centerfield" video is now. I will make no such calculations. "Centerfield," and the "Centerfield" video especially, this song exemplifies the timeless, universal phenomenon where remembering a famous hit pop song and remembering a famous or even not famous sports guy can light up the exact same pleasure center in your brain.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  They both open a portal to the idyllic, carefree, distant, unrecoverable past. The name weighed bogs. Superstar third baseman, Boston Red Sox, I don't give a shit about the Red Sox either. The sonorous, lilting quality of the name weighed bogs and the gourmet cheeseball keyboard line.

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  They can both trigger an unexpected, instantaneous joy. Both the name and the melody can provide a wistful sort of solace. They can both bring you legitimate comfort. They can both magically transport you back to the, what do you call them, the glory days.

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  Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, "Glory Days," 1984. See, Bruce Springsteen, new wave guy. Speaking of dopamine-hit gourmet cheeseball circus keyboard lines.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  I forgot that in the "Glory Days" video, Bruce spends part of the time just watching baseball on TV alone while drinking beer and looking vaguely pensive and dissatisfied with the arc of his life. It's a powerful image. The boss himself, bathed in a melancholy TV glow as he's just throwing back a few and perhaps remembering some guys. Oh, right. Yeah, so in 2015, I'm working for the sports blog Deadspin. I'm the culture editor at Deadspin. I'm writing about music and movies and stuff for a sports blog. Sports

• 13:34Speaker 01

  and pop culture on one website, unprecedented. And one day, Friday, May 15th, 2015, on that fateful day, one of my dear colleagues, the superstar blogger and editor Tom Ley, Tom writes a very short, goofy, throwaway Deadspin post that unexpectedly starts a revolution. I didn't have anything to do with this, and I wasn't even physically in the office with him. I was just on staff, working remotely and on the internet when this occurred. This is my single greatest professional accomplishment, my vague proximity to this event. The headline

• 14:13Speaker 01

  is "Let's Remember Some Guys." And this post, in the time-honored manner of many mid-2010s sports blog posts, it's inspired by a tweet. That same day, the NFL podcast Around the NFL has a tweet that just goes, "Colts running back Vic Ballard, colon, quote, 'It feels like a lot of people just forgot about me,' end quote." There's a typo in the tweet, but that only makes it more authentic. And so this blog post, Tom just embeds that tweet and he says, quote, "Damn, Vic Ballard is right. I totally forgot about him. I've forgotten

• 14:53Speaker 01

  about a lot of guys, and I bet you have too." Frown emoji. "Let's remember some of them," end quote. And then Tom just lists a bunch of guys, NFL guys, in honor of temporarily forgotten Colts running back Vic Ballard. They might all be running backs, but I don't have time to check. And that's the whole blog post. Tom just reels off the names of 18 guys with zero context. Do you mind, actually, if I put on some smooth 1985-type shit and remember these guys real quick? Thank you.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Sam Congato, Olandis Gary, Ryan Grant, Ontario Smith, Mike Anderson, Nick Goings, Steve Slaton, Lamont Jordan, Corel Buckhalter, Nafahu Tahi, Tatum Bell, Willie Parker, Marion Barber, Najee Davenport, Anthony Thomas, Kevin Barlow, Dominic Williams, Ruben Drones. Okay, how'd that go for you?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  It's unexpectedly super pleasant, right? It's legitimately comforting, right? And I say that even though, and don't tell anyone I said this, I find the act of remembering some guys hugely comforting, even if I personally only remembered six of those guys just now, six out of 18. I forgot 66% of those guys. I won't say exactly which six guys I remember. Out of respect for the 12 guys, I don't, but like, I remember Najee Davenport. Okay, and the comment section on Tom Ley's "Let's Remember Some Guys" blog post explodes.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Suddenly, you got hundreds of blog commenter guys remembering hundreds of NFL guys. Everybody on the internet just naming guys. The original Deadspin post is still up, but the comment section got nuked long ago. It's too long a story, even by my standards. And so now "Let's Remember Some Guys" becomes a minor cottage industry, just arbitrary lists of guys with no additional commentary, a reliable source of content for Deadspin and other sports and maybe culture websites of its ilk. Here we have "Let's Remember Some Guys," the video version.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Do you remember New York Yankee Dan Pasqua?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Yes, Dan Pasqua, another New Jersey legend. When I was a kid, there was somebody that was pretending to be Dan Pasqua in North Jersey to get free meals at Italian restaurants. And he got in trouble for it. It was fantastic. Like, I remember-

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Specifically Italian restaurants?

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, because I think he would go in there and he'd be like, "I don't want to make a big deal of it, but I'm Dan Pasqua." And they'd be like, "Dan Pasqua!"

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Okay, there's some commentary. Here's a Deadspin video from 2018 called "Remembering Some Guys, 1988 Baseball Guys," starring then-Deadspin staffers David Roth and Lauren Tyson. They just open packs of old baseball cards and remember the guys. I like half-remember Dan Pasqua. I'm giving myself half a point for Dan Pasqua. I had no idea about the Dan Pasqua Italian restaurant impostor, though. So there's an inside-baseball media subtext here in that 2018. It's still the era where major blogs are under huge corporate pressure

• 18:35Speaker 01

  to do more video stuff, to pivot to video. Video content was a bygone, fleeting whim of the industry. Certainly, nobody's under any pressure to try video stuff now. But in 2018, Deadspin responds to this broad and temporary "do more video imperative" by doing the dumbest, most pointless, least visually compelling videos they can think of. Nowadays, Tom and David and Lauren are all blogging and remembering guys on the wonderful website defector.com. But even in this context, "Remembering Some Guys," it's one of those things that starts out as an ironic joke, but then it turns out that people sincerely love doing

• 19:19Speaker 01

  it for real. I wonder why that is, really. The question of why "Remembering Some Guys" holds such immense, invigorating cosmic power is explored, in fact, in the single greatest three tweet thread in Twitter history. I don't want to be the guy who's just reciting tweets word-for-word on a video podcast all the time. I want better for myself and also for you. But like, this is important.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Okay, so 2021, somebody with the Twitter display name EM Hudson says, quote, dudes can literally just sit around and name old sports players and just have the best time, end quote. This tweet goes mega viral. 198,000 likes, 2,800 plus replies. And somebody with the Twitter display name Kyle Boggs, Kyle Boggs replies and says, quote, decades of gender slash sexuality research tell us that this is a dude thing because some men still don't have social permission to create

• 20:33Speaker 01

  direct bonds with other men. Those bonds have to be indirect through sports talk, women, et cetera, which is one of many ways hetero patriarchy hurts men too, end quote. That's what Kyle Boggs says. And then somebody with the Twitter display name Crash Override replies to Kyle Boggs and says, quote, any relation to Wade Boggs? And I just about died. I am a mere spectator, an awestruck observer of the let's remember some guys phenomenon.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  I am myself an unremarkable, total amateur guy rememberer. You know what I remember? Bands, super famous bands, semi-famous bands, semi-obscure bands, super obscure bands, Dead Eye Dick. That's a band. Remember them? Remembering some bands is not quite the same activity as remembering some guys. Slightly different vibes, slightly different core audience, I suppose. But there is a strikingly similar spiritual effect. Sports and pop culture do go together. And the wildest experience of all is when you remember a

• 21:50Speaker 01

  sports guy and remember a music person simultaneously at any point in your life, for any reason or for no reason at all, an oft-remembered sports guy and an oft-remembered pop singer can become inexplicably permanently intertwined in your head, to the benefit of both those people and to your eternal benefit as well. Let me give you an example. In the late 80s, I read an article in Sports Illustrated about what Major League Baseball relief pitchers do to amuse themselves in the bullpen during rain delays. That's

• 22:30Speaker 01

  the premise of the article. Some human interest for you, some boyish whimsy. Also, I cannot find this article online, and so I'm doing this entirely from memory, and that memory may be partly or entirely wrong. What do relief pitchers do in the bullpen to entertain themselves and others during lengthy rain delays? This article describes various benign, semi-childish antics, juggling mid-thunderstorm foot races, slip and slide action on the tarps in the infield, et cetera. But the specific image from this article that has stuck in my head for nearly 40 years now, I'm like 10 years old when I read this. It says in

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Sports Illustrated that Dan Quisenberry, fan favorite Kansas City Royals reliever, Dan Quisenberry, a guy perhaps too famous to need to be remembered. It says in Sports Illustrated that during rain delays, Dan Quisenberry has been known to dance in the rain to Sade's Smooth Operator.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Smooth Operator, the breakthrough 1984 single by the phenomenal jazz pop soul London band Sade, a band led by the phenomenal Nigerian-born singer Sade Adu. Sade, the singer, leads Sade, the band. If you're ever dancing or lip syncing to Smooth Operator, or better yet, if you're ever doing karaoke to Smooth Operator, I advise you to hit that No Need to Ask as hard as you can, just before the chorus. Pump your fist, or do double finger guns, or do a quick karate kick if you are able. And don't forget the English accent

• 24:24Speaker 01

  on Ask. I advise you to somehow comically overemphasize the No Need to Ask. Huge crowd pleaser. Trust me, Dan Quisenberry, five-time American League saves leader and 1985 World Series champion with the Kansas City Royals, Dan Quisenberry, with his famous bizarre submarine style delivery, his pitching hand just inches from the ground on release. How many little league pitchers in the 80s physically fell off the pitcher's mound trying to imitate Dan Quisenberry's pitching motion? I cannot guarantee you that I personally didn't do

• 25:06Speaker 01

  that while trying to do that. Dan Quisenberry, whose nickname was simply Quiz, and who sported a majestic voluminous great American hero mustache that looks the way drinking a cold six-pack of Budweiser feels. Dan Quisenberry likes to dance to Sade's Smooth Operator. And sitting there at 10 years old, reading Sports Illustrated, I took the liberty of committing that fact, scare quotes, to memory. And I will never hear Dan Quisenberry's name without thinking about Sade's voice. And I will never hear Sade's voice again without thinking about him.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Coast to coast, LA to Chicago. If that line were sung by any other singer in pop music history, it would annoy the hell out of me. That's not, no, but Sade sang that line, and so I love it. I hear Sade sing that line, and there it is. I can feel it, a soul-deep serenity, a warm blanket, a glittering portal, a childlike regression. Back to the mid 80s, I hear Sade's voice, and I am a kid again. I'm a kid who loves MTV, sports, video games, and bloopers. And also, there's Dan Quisenberry. Now, it is possible, it is in fact likely, that I am wrong about some part of this. I'm like

• 26:49Speaker 01

  80% sure this article was in Sports Illustrated, and I'm like 40% sure it was Dan Quisenberry dancing to Smooth Operator. The Sade fan might have been some other relief pitcher, a less memorable relief pitcher. But it does sound like something Dan Quisenberry would do. I found this short video tribute to him on YouTube, and it's clear that our buddy Quiz is a real cut-up. Although quite serious when opposing American League hitters, Quiz has been known for his unusual antics in the bullpen and off the field. If you're not watching this, I need to tell you that at this point in the video, Dan Quisenberry playfully tosses his baseball glove over his shoulder, and he picks up

• 27:33Speaker 01

  a water hose, not a fire hose, not that large a hose, but bigger than a garden hose. Dan picks up a hose, and he playfully sprays it around at, you know, waist height. He's a colorful guy. I cannot explain this to you. As a 10-year-old, the image of Dan Quisenberry twirling around in a rain-mistled bullpen to the sultry strains of Sade's Smooth Operator, his mustache glistening in the foggy stadium lights, this image just lodged itself in my head. And the older I get, the more that image stands in for my whole childhood

• 28:13Speaker 01

  and for that whole era of humanity. What was life like in the 80s, Dad? Dan Quisenberry dancing to Smooth Operator. That's what it was like. Sade Adu's voice is one of the most startling, the most soothing, the richest, the deepest, the saddest, the most devastated, the most triumphant, the most hopeful, the most resilient, the most righteously indignant, the most powerful physical forces ever unleashed on this planet. The sublime power of Sade's voice can manifest itself in totally random, surreal, nonsensical, objectively frivolous ways. But Sade's supernatural powers of inspiration and consolation, this is another

• 28:57Speaker 01

  one of the things that starts out as silly and semi-ironic, but then, when you really, really, really need her, her voice can revive you and inspire you and console you and maybe even save your life for real.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 48th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing By Your Side from the Sade album Lover's Rock, released in the year 2000. The language is so beautifully simple, and the melody is so beautifully simple, and the sentiment is so beautifully simple. But as the early 21st century gets darker and uglier and more horrendously complicated, this is the sentiment, and this is the voice that might cut through it all and make it all bearable. The message of By Your Side is that you don't have to bear it all alone.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Sade's voice wraps us in a warm embrace and says, let's remember some guys together.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  There are plenty of I'll Be There For You type songs that I love very much, but I don't believe them. You know, I don't believe you'll actually be there for me, Bon Jovi, or the Rembrandts, or Method Man, but Sade I believe. Sade I will always believe.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Let's hopefully remember some ads.

• 30:49Speaker 04

  Shaq here. What's it like to buy a car from Carvana 100% online and get it delivered to your door? Let me tell you. Your car is here, Mr. Shaq. Thank you, Mr. Carvana guy. Can't wait to take it for a spin. Only the best for you, Mr. Shaq. Hey, have you always been so big, tall, and handsome? Not always. I was 6'10" once. Seven days to love it or return it, Mr. Shaq. Not that I would. You never do. No, I never do. So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at carvana.com.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat, and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard-fought place. They're all jammed inside every can of NOS Energy. High-performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal-to-the-metal, human horsepower for the streets. Go ahead, crack open a can of NOS Energy and get after it. When the sun goes down, the appetizers come out. Yeah, you heard that right. Late-night, half-price appetizers are here at Applebee's. Saucy, sweet, and spicy boneless wings. Crispy, cheesy mozzarella sticks. Creamy spinach and artichoke dip. Your favorite apps, half-price, available every single night because why

• 32:01Speaker 00

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• 32:14Speaker 01

  I got two more very important notes on Dan Quisenberry. We'll do one now. A dear college friend of mine, we worked at the college radio station together. We're playing the Chemical Brothers and Macy Gray and The Roots and Gomez to a rapt listening audience of basically nobody. He's a big music guy, but also a big sports guy. And so my buddy's got a YouTube channel now called Junk Wax Genius, where he just opens old packs of baseball cards on camera. This very much exists in the Let's Remember Some Guys Expanded Universe. There is an awareness in these videos that this activity is both objectively

• 32:53Speaker 01

  pointless and incalculably life-affirming. My friend and I, we live in different states. We don't talk on the phone, and we've seen each other in person like four times in the last 20 years. But despite the fact that due to heteropatriarchy, I still don't have social permission to create direct bonds with other men in any other way, I will say that it's cool that I can swing by my friend's YouTube channel every so often and just hear his voice.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  And we have Billy Hatcher, Mitch Williams, call that a rookie card for sure, Darryl Strawberry, Diamond King, off-center, Tim Tuffel, Ed Hearn, Mets hot pack, Jim Winn, one of the best names for a pitcher, as opposed to Bob Walk, one of the worst names, or Eric Plunk, Dan Quisenberry. I'm glad they captured his weird delivery. Nice card there.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  It's a weird pitching delivery. Even on a baseball card, it looks like Dan Quisenberry is throwing the ball directly at the ground. My friend's opening a pack of 1987 Donriss cards there, by the way, with the Roberto Clemente puzzle pieces. Helen Falasha de Adu is born in Abadan, Nigeria, in 1959. Her mother is an English district nurse, and her father is a Nigerian economics professor. Her parents separate when she's very young. She moves to England when she's four years old. She studies fashion design in London at the St. Martin's School of Art. She does a little modeling herself, and she starts singing backup with a hot London jazz funk pop soul band called Pride. I appreciate

• 34:35Speaker 01

  how cool everyone looks and how hard everyone's working here. The bass player especially is playing his ass off. But the other members of Pride already seem to be aware that backup singer is not Helen Falasha de Adu's natural role.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Here we have pretty rare video footage of Pride playing a song called "When You Can't Back Down" in 1982 at the famed London nightclub Heaven. The most compelling part of this video is when Shadé herself just walks into the room as the band is playing. It's not a supermodel runway walk necessarily, but there's an immediate gravity, an otherworldly magnetism to this person. The camera seems reluctant to turn away from her, and so the camera doesn't.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Pride are a big whoop in the early 80s London nightlife scene, but Shadé, the singer's big break comes when she forms Shadé the Band with some fellow members of Pride. Talking to the British magazine The Times in 2010, Shadé says, quote, "I didn't have any confidence as a singer, but I found that I liked writing songs," end quote. Her first song to attract major attention, co-written by Shadé Adu and her Pride bandmate Ray St. John, is called "Smooth Operator."

• 36:43Speaker 01

  No matter the context, karaoke, jukeboxes, bullpen, dance routines, et cetera, if you're given the option, please avoid the single version of "Smooth Operator" and instead select the album version, which includes Shadé's spoken-word intro, in which she describes a gentleman who is pretty clearly a fuckboy in the modern parlance. Yes, that is not 1984 terminology, but like, this dude sure sounds like a fuckboy. Placing high stakes, making hearts ache, he's loved in seven languages. Then the keyboard goes brrrr. In 1984, Shadé

• 37:23Speaker 01

  the Band released their debut album, Diamond Life, featuring their durable core lineup of Shadé Adu on vocals, Stuart Mathewman on saxophone and guitar, Andrew Hale on keyboards, and Paul S. Denman on bass, augmented by horns and drums and percussion and whatnot. We got the super hard-working bass player from Pride in this new band. Okay, excellent. The way Shadé harmonizes with herself on the word loverboy, I feel like something crucial about our best-case-scenario vision of the 1980s snaps into place on the word loverboy.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  And though she is describing unambiguously a fuckboy, a proto-fuckboy, I do think that Shadé Adu also moves in space with minimum waste and maximum joy. The pre-chorus of "Smooth Operator" is a Reagan-era slash Thatcher-era high point, I think. The sumptuous meal Shadé makes of the word chants here. Sorry, chants. This is the star-making vocal performance of someone who is going to be maximum famous with admirably minimum effort.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  No need to ask. Dig the saxophone, wrapping luxuriously around Shadé's voice there. Dig the bass, burbling underneath her voice like champagne bubbles. Dig the hypnotic, unhurried, Latin-inflected tempo. Dig the total command of vibe by both the singer and her band. Shadé's debut album, Diamond Life, is a huge hit. Number two on the UK Albums Chart, number five on the US Billboard Albums Chart, 10 million copies sold worldwide. If streaming numbers mean anything to you, if you hear one song from this record out in the wild now, it's going to be the one with the super hornball lyrics.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Of course, I'm just kidding. Mostly, this song is called "Your Love Is King," and the modest music video continues the wise tradition of pointing a camera at Shadé and staying out of her way. Shadé and maybe a deck of cards is all this situation requires visually. Dig the globe-trotting elegance of the groove here. Dig the sublime, smooth-jazz-adjacent sophistication. Dig the tasty, windswept yacht-rock overtones, if you want to get real nasty. Dig the sax. Right now, we don't need to hear a ton of saxophone, per se, but we need at least, like, three seconds of sax.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  And meanwhile, from the very start of her global super fame, even here on her band's first official single, Sade has already mastered the art of making subtle gestures feel grandiose. Even something as simple as her slightly drawing out those last four words, "Your love is king," there's an exponential impact. There is an immediate gravity, an otherworldly magnetism to this person's voice. She is drawing you in. She is already, from the very start, offering you protection, solace, comfort. This song is called "I Will Be Your Friend," and she means it. She means the woo-woo-woos here most of all.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  "Until the End of Time," here again is a phrase or a sentiment that you encounter often in pop songs, but I don't necessarily believe it when like Justin Timberlake tells me he's gonna love me until the end of time. I know he's not talking to me personally, but you know what I mean. Whereas Sade's voice has both the regal majesty of a pop star who will endure until the end of time and a close, personal, compassionate, reliable friend who will indeed remain your friend until the end of time. Sade is huge now. And here in the eighties, starting with Diamond Life, Sade is gonna put out three fantastic albums in five years.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Do not get used to that rate of production, but dig the sauce, the heartbreaking and voice-breaking sauce. Sade is about to put on the word "lies."

• 43:35Speaker 01

  The second Sade album comes out in 1985 and is called Promise. Yes, 1985, just one year after the first album. This band might crank out a rad new album every year until the end of time. That song is called "Is It a Crime?" And there is substantial bombast. There is tasty, billowing, lapel-grabbing, ass-kicking saxophone action. But yeah, no, mostly it's the way her voice breaks on the word "lies" there. As her career progresses, Sade is going to sing some extraordinarily sad, profoundly heavy songs. And as a result, coupled with her famous public reticence, she does some interviews, but not tons of them. She is a celebrity, but

• 44:18Speaker 01

  clearly a reluctant and increasingly reclusive one. Sade develops a certain mysterious and intimidating reputation. In a 1992 interview with the writer and critic Michael Gonzalez, Sade says, quote, "I think people do think of me as this depressed person crying in my ivory tower. What I like personally, when I listen to other people's music, is when the music makes you feel something. Sad, happy, makes you wanna dance, makes you feel elated. Sadness in songs is positive because it brings it out of you. It brings the sadness out. It's not that the song makes you feel

• 44:58Speaker 01

  sad. The sadness is already there. The song just makes you recognize it." End quote. Same deal with horniness, by the way.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Here we have "The Sweetest Taboo," a US top-five hit off Promise, which hit number one on the album charts in both the UK and the USA. "The Sweetest Taboo" is a song about rampant, jubilant horniness. Listen, I could spend 45 minutes trying to think of a cringey, winking, jokey, half-clever way to say that, or I could just say the word "horniness" three times in 60 seconds and we could move on. We're all adults here, and if you're not an adult, you're better off learning about this stuff from Sade. Genuinely stupendous full-band performance on "The Sweetest Taboo" also, especially fantastic drumbeat. We got Dave Early on drums going

• 46:09Speaker 01

  the quick little jaunty bursts of piano, too, from Andrew Hale. Stuart Matthewman on guitar and Paul Denman on bass, playing super eighties, slinky, rubbery funk that keeps you hooked without getting too flashy and demanding your attention. The ecstatic synergy, the electric current between Sade, the pop superstar, and Sade, the hot shit live band. Minimum waste, maximum joy. The guitar alone here. Sheesh.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  I can smell 1985 like a fart in a car, and that's as sweet as 1985 has ever smelled. There has to be a better way to put that, but that'll do for now. If you absolutely must classify this music, if you insist on assigning it a genre, and you're torn between pop, or funk, or jazz, or soul, et cetera, you could do far worse than to just call this "Quiet Storm," the slow and sultry and rapturously intimate R&B variant Quiet Storm, named initially for an extra sumptuous 1975 Smokey Robinson solo album. A year later, in 1976, Quiet Storm becomes a surprise blockbuster

• 47:37Speaker 01

  radio format, starting with Howard University Station 96.3 FM WHUR in Washington DC on the apocal weekly show Melvin Lindsey's Quiet Storm. Ludicrously smooth shit that can morph from immediate pop ecstasy to deep background ambiance as the situation demands. There's a fantastic Pitchfork essay, written by the critic and author and friend of the show Eric Harvey, that traces the 40-year arc of Quiet Storm from Marvin Gaye to the Isley Brothers, to Luther Vandross, to Anita Baker, and on and on and on, all the way up to Whitney Houston, and Toni Braxton, and Jill Scott, and beyond. But

• 48:22Speaker 01

  more importantly, Eric's got a playlist, an incredible 108-song playlist called "All This Love: The Best of Quiet Storm," that moves more or less chronologically. Sade's "Smooth Operator" is the 68th song. "I've been listening to this Quiet Storm playlist for the last nine hours straight. Unbelievable musical experience." You ever do that? Just hyper-focus on one playlist and house the entire thing in one day? One of my best pure music-listening days in ages. This song didn't make the cut, but I get it.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Stevie Wonder, "Part-Time Lover," 1985, another humid, fragrant classic from 1985. Luther Vandross on backing vocals, plus Sarita Wright and Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire. This song might be just a touch too fast and insistent to qualify as classic Quiet Storm, but I have this weirdly vivid childhood memory. I'm sitting in the kitchen of my childhood home, mid-eighties, and the radio's on, just a small, sub-boombox kitchen counter sort of deal. I'm sitting at the kitchen table, drawing, or coloring, or whatever, and "Part-Time Lover" comes on. And this eerie, arresting serenity

• 49:50Speaker 01

  just washes over me. Something about the tinny, imperfect fidelity of the radio, the tender, familiar command of Stevie Wonder's voice, and most importantly, this alarming, melancholy edge. In that moment, I strongly doubt that I'm alone in my house, but I feel alone, and I'm mostly but not entirely cool with it. You know? I'll never forget it. Sade hits in that same way for me, this vague but alarmingly potent yearning for something, or for someone, or for some slightly, or not so slightly, bygone time. And that yearning intensifies the more she talks about how she'll always be there for you.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  The third Sade album comes out in 1988 and is called "Stronger Than Pride." This is my favorite song on this record. It's called "Give It Up." Everything and everyone is so dialed in here. The deft percussion, the bubbling bass, the distant, melodious backing vocals. But there's an exquisite loneliness to this song. Does that make any sense to you? It's fine if it doesn't make sense. It would lessen my exquisite loneliness if you agreed with me. Sade is an impossibly cool and surprisingly prolific eighties pop star. Sade is as cool and as prolific in the eighties as like Rihanna is when she's starting out in the 2000s. But now it's time for Sade to start acting

• 51:33Speaker 01

  like Rihanna now. Now it's time for the exquisite loneliness of Sade's music to intensify as she gives us less and less of it.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  In 1992, Sade released their fourth album called Love Deluxe. It will be Sade's only album of the 90s. This song is called "No Ordinary Love." She sings those words so sweetly that you don't even register the devastating impact. "I gave you all the love I got. I gave you more than I could give." Plus, we need the video, right? We need the sad mermaid video. We need the image of Sade, the Homeric Siren, the voice that can wreck a thousand ships. The sound of Love Deluxe is blurrier, more electronic. Here in the 90s, Sade is in musical dialogue, of course, with other Titanic throwback soul singers,

• 52:39Speaker 01

  from Mary J. Blige to Erykah Badu. But there's a trip-hop feel to this album, too. I hear the cerebral beauty of Massive Attack. I hear Portishead at their most deceptively serene. But only Sade, the band backing Sade, the pop singer, could hit you as hard as no ordinary love hits you when she draws out each word of the chorus, a subtle, grandiose, extraordinary gesture she perfected ages ago. Possibly, she perfected this sort of thing geological ages ago.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  The tiny micro breaths between words there, between syllables.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  The space between those notes is the most beautiful music this person or this band has ever made. Same deal with this song on Love Deluxe called Cherish the Day. You gotta be kidding me. Sade sings "If You Were Mine." She waits five seconds. She sings "If You Were Mine" again. She waits another five seconds. She sings "I Wouldn't Want to Go." She waits five seconds. And then the last two words hit you like a tidal wave.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  That's a life-changing Sade moment that explains why Drake, very famously, has multiple Sade tattoos. Get a job. Stay away from her. And that's it for Sade in the 90s. One classic album in 1992. Stuart Mathewman, Sade guitarist and saxophonist. Stuart works extensively with neo-soul star Maxwell on his splendid 1996 debut album, Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite. You can hear Sade everywhere and all sorts of other people. But Sade herself often seems to have disappeared. Both musically and temperamentally, Sade becomes as ungodly powerful in absence as a presence.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  It takes her eight years to put out another album. In the mid-'90s, she goes through a divorce. She has a child. She shuns the spotlight. It's nothing personal, but she shuns us, her fans, her public. And we can only yearn for her as magnificently as she's yearned in song for various fuckboys. Talking to the fader in the year 2000, Sade says, "If there's something big going on in my life, I can't switch it off in the middle and go make a record. Luckily, because I am in the position that I don't have to work, I can put the people in my life as a priority.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  A relative of mine got very sick, and I was there looking after her with my mum. I couldn't walk away. You can talk about stuff and sing about stuff, but if you don't live it in the end, then it's all fake." End quote. Meanwhile, the long public silence only compounds and enriches her myth. D'Angelo will soon master this trick as well, accidentally or on purpose. The fifth Sade album finally comes out in November 2000, and it's called Lover's Rock. And when you saw only one set of footprints in the sand, that's when she carried you.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  This song is called "King of Sorrow." "I'm crying everyone's tears" is a phrase and a sentiment that you encounter less often in pop songs, because very few pop stars would think to say it, and even fewer stars are capable of actually doing it. Dig the "King of Sorrow" video also, in which Sade plays a harried, working mother who is also a glamorous pop singer. She walks through a grocery store the same way she walked through a hip, mid-'80s London nightclub. This album Lover's Rock is named for the extra sumptuous and romantic reggae style that got very popular in London in the mid-'70s. Sade, the band, the lineup's unchanged, Sade, Stuart, Andrew, Paul.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  But the sound here is less opulent, less jazzy, no saxophone blasts. What you get instead is some light, swooning orchestration and some cool, electronic dissonance at the edges, in the ether, almost. I would characterize the overall vibe as one of deceptive tranquility. I don't know what it means that she calls herself the "King of Sorrow," not the "Queen of Sorrow," but it definitely means something.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  One might hear this song, "King of Sorrow," in the year 2000 and think fondly of 1985. Sade, in less than two decades, she's already got a timeless, eternal sort of voice that helped define that era and can still transport you back to that era, if that is what you desire. But she herself is not confined to the '80s or to any time or place or mood. There is an insistent modernity to the Lover's Rock album. She is steely-eyed about the present. She is steely-eyed about the past also, given that the past is not solely a venue for cheap, dorky sports and pop culture nostalgia.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  This is a song about Sade's father, her Nigerian-born father's early experiences in London. It is called "Immigrant."

• 59:42Speaker 01

  The super-heavy spaces between the lines here, between the lines, "He didn't know what it was to be black, till they gave him his change but didn't want to touch his hand." Plus, the robotic staccato intonation of "to even the toughest among us." Sade, now more than ever, has mastered the art of conveying a feeling, sometimes a light and lovely feeling, sometimes a dark and deeply sorrowful feeling, through both her lyrics and her phrasing. Let me give you another example.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  The first song on Lover's Rock and the album's lead single is called "By Your Side." She's carrying you again. She's crying everyone's tears again. She'll be your friend till the end of time again. She's giving you more than she could give again. This is no ordinary love again. And even the music literalizes the companionship, the support Sade is offering here. The chord progression descends when things look bleak. You think I'd leave your side, baby? And then there is a cautious ascent. You know me better than that. The chords descend again. You think I'd leave you down when you're down on your knees? Then a cautious ascent.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  I wouldn't do that. Repeat. I've never quite grasped the exact wording or the precise lyrical sentiments right here, but by now, even just a minute into this song, I understand her perfectly.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  The acoustic guitar squeaks right before she launches into the "ahs" and right after she sings "and if only you could see into me." The squeaks are essential. Also, here we have the "by your side" video, wherein the concept, as always, is point a camera at Sade. Though here notably, she is depicted amid a gorgeous, orange sunset that is, in fact, so orange that you might describe it as worrisomely orange. It's like airborne toxic event orange. And therefore, Sade may be calmly and elegantly traversing the apocalypse, which fits, actually, because "by your side" is a song about the reliability, the steadfastness, the enduring,

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  consoling presence of Sade, even though we're seeing less and less of her all the time. This album, Lover's Rock, is her first album in eight years, and she won't put out her next album for 10 years, until Soldier of Love in 2010. And yet, you do not question, you do not doubt her reliability, her consoling presence. I saw Sade live at an outdoor amphitheater in Columbus, Ohio, on the night of Monday, September 10, 2001, the night before. I've been debating, all the way up until right now, how big a deal I should make out of this. And I guess I'm better off not making a huge deal of it here.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  But it was, and it remains, a huge deal to me in my ears and in my head. I don't concretely remember much about that night. Nice night, cool breeze, the soft grass I sat on. A sense of uneasy but hard-fought peace that couldn't last, but maybe it could last a little while. But it didn't. It lasted less than 24 hours. There's before the Sade concert and after the Sade concert in my head. And that's overwrought and unnecessary. That's too much for Sade herself to have to take on, even in my head. But Sade's ability to take on heaviness that isn't hers is kind of, sort of, maybe Sade's superpower.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  The vocal harmonies here on the words "when you're lost" and "and you're alone," and then finally on "bring you home." And after all the violence and double talk, there's just a song and all the trouble and the strife.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  My first good friends to get married, they got married in 2002, and Sade's "by your side" was their first wedding dance. I remember standing there on the reception dance floor, watching them and being like, "Sade, all right. Excellent." Incidentally, the groom is a long-running fantasy baseball league so intense that they all draft in person every year. And I joined the league for exactly one year, but he kicked me out mid-season for inactivity. Just so you know who you're dealing with, I just asked my friend why he and his wife picked this song, and he said, "We heard it in an episode of Sex and the City."

• 1:05:16Speaker 06

  Samantha finally threw in the towel. All this time, she'd been trying to make him just a perfect dick, fighting her feelings that he might be the perfect Richard.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  I don't know who Samantha is dancing with there exactly. I don't remember the names of any Sex and the City guys. I suspect his name might be Richard. They're both wearing robes, thus the "threw in the towel" line. That clip kind of killed the vibe a little bit, I suspect, but that's okay. Sade used to work as pure childhood nostalgia for me, and now she's more complicated. But as in most cases, musically at least, complicated is better. The baseball guys, I still remember, might also be more complicated and insightful than I anticipated. Did you know that Kansas City Royals star relief pitcher Dan Quisenberry wrote a book

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  of poetry? He retired in 1990 with 244 career saves, which currently puts him at number 41 on the all-time saves list. But despite that, Dan was not inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is bullshit. But yeah, Dan Quisenberry published a whole book of poetry called "On Days Like This" in 1998, which is the same year he died of brain cancer. He was 45. If you don't mind terribly, I'd like to read one of Dan's poems. I think he's earned the last word here today. This poem is called "Baseball Cards."

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  "That first baseball card I saw myself in a triage of rookies atop the bodies that made the hill we played king of. I am the older one, the one on the right, game face sincere, long red hair unkempt, a symbol of the 70s, somehow a sign of manhood. You don't see how my knees shook on my debut or my desperation to make it. The second one, I look boyish with a gap-toothed smile, the smile of a guy who has it his

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  way, expects it. I rode the wave's crest of pennant and trophies. I sat relaxed with one thought: I can do this. You don't see me staying up till 2:00, raining in nerves or post-game hands that shook involuntarily. Glory years catch action shots, arm whips and body contortions, a human catapult. The backs of those cards cite numbers that tell stories of saves, wins, flags, records,

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  handshakes, butt slaps, celebration mobs. You can't see the cost of winning. Lines on my forehead under the hat, trench line between my eyes. You don't see my wife, daughter, and son left behind. The last few cards, I do not smile. I grim face the camera, tight-lipped. No more forced poses to win fans. Eyes squint, scanning distance. Crow's feet turn into eagle's claws.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  You don't see the quiver in my heart, knowledge that it is over, just playing out the end. I look back at who I thought I was or used to be. Now, trying to be funny, I tell folks, 'I used to be famous. I used to be good.' They say, 'We thought you were bigger.' I say, 'I was.'"

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  We are so honored to be joined once again by Danielle Smith, writer, critic, podcaster, editor, editor in chief, and author of the wonderful memoir, Shine Bright, A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop. Danielle, thank you so much for being here.

• 1:09:55Speaker 06

  Well, you're welcome, Rob. It's lovely to see you. It's lovely to hear your voice.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Likewise, likewise. Thanks so much for taking the time. I was listening, you, of course, did the Black Girl Songbook podcast for The Ringer, and you devoted a very early episode to Sade. And you talked about being inspired by her from the very beginning. And you talked about how Sade, for you, embodies sort of the mix of love and ambition, or maybe the conflict between love and ambition. Like, how does Sade embody and model that idea of ambition for you?

• 1:10:29Speaker 06

  I think, um, I think Sade is not that much older than me. So I feel like we came of age, um, in similar timeframes. I feel like there was, um, there was, I would look at her and I would see myself in her energy.

• 1:10:49Speaker 06

  I definitely wanted to, and when my hair was long enough, I would rock the Sade ponytail.

• 1:10:57Speaker 06

  I wanted the Sade red lip.

• 1:11:01Speaker 06

  In times of great joy, I turned to her.

• 1:11:06Speaker 06

  And it seems like, and maybe this is just my memory, but it seems like when you're in your early twenties,

• 1:11:14Speaker 06

  and you like someone, and if you're straight like me, then, a straight girl like me, then it's the boys that you like.

• 1:11:21Speaker 06

  And it's that era in your life when the love is so intense and you have so little experience with adult emotions.

• 1:11:34Speaker 06

  And Sade just seemed like she got it.

• 1:11:39Speaker 06

  And she, it seemed like, you know, I'd grown up listening to Motown and Philly Sound, and it's probably not a bigger Donna Summer fan than myself.

• 1:11:57Speaker 06

  But Sade somehow felt like ours.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:01Speaker 06

  And like, she got me, she got us, and then when you add that song,

• 1:12:08Speaker 06

  When Am I Going to Make a Living?

• 1:12:12Speaker 06

  I think that in that moment, in your early twenties, at least for me, if it's changed, let me know, because maybe it has.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:12:21Speaker 06

  But that moment, when you don't know how to make a living,

• 1:12:25Speaker 06

  and you don't know if you're in love, if you should be in love, what a heartbreak really means, and how long does it last? And then Sade's just right there for you.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've talked about that song. It was on her first record, like, right from the very beginning, like, she seemed to understand that. And she seemed to be sort of inspirational for you, which is sort of a tricky thing in pop, right? Like, you see, you hear a lot of songs trying to be inspirational, motivational, but like, a lot of it can come off a little cheesy. You know, like, they're just trying to sell you something. Like, what made Sade sort of inspirational, but in a way that felt sort of genuine and sincere? And like, she got you, and you got her?

• 1:13:14Speaker 06

  Well, let me say right off, Rob, that I love to be like, walking on sunshine as much as anybody else. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:13:23Speaker 06

  Like, I, like, I love a good inspirational, girl, you can do it. We're all in it together. We are the world. We are the children. Like, I'm here for it, Rob. Like, I'm here for it. Diamond Life?

• 1:13:44Speaker 06

  That was Rihanna before Rihanna energy.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Yes, very much so, very much so.

• 1:13:49Speaker 06

  Right?

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Speaker 06

  And I wanted a diamond life, but diamond life means that you last forever. It means that you're beautiful. It means that everybody loves you. It means that you're rare. It means that you're special. It means that you're admired by all and sundry. And so I don't know where else in that moment, from a woman, and a black woman, where I was getting that

• 1:14:25Speaker 06

  in precisely that way musically. Like, I was still listening to and loving, like, Gladys Knight, Love Overboard. Like, you know what I mean? Like, and, and I still listen to, Gladys Knight is my favorite artist of all time, period, end of story.

• 1:14:42Speaker 06

  So I still listen to Gladys Knight all the time. And I listen to her even more relentlessly in that era. And I was getting so much from Neither One of Us Wants to be the First to Say Goodbye. I was getting so much from Midnight Train to Georgia. I was getting so much.

• 1:14:57Speaker 06

  But Gladys was still who my mom came of age with.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:15:06Speaker 06

  And so I just felt, from Sade,

• 1:15:11Speaker 06

  that she was the kind of girl that I might bump into at the club, in the ladies' room, upset because my boyfriend was dancing with another girl, and she would say, you know what, fuck him.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:32Speaker 06

  Because you're, because you're beautiful, and I have some lip gloss that matches your blouse. And also, my boyfriend's friend is here, and he's single. And he told me he thought you were cute, so let's, let's go back out there together. And we're gonna hold hands and walk back out to the dance floor. And we're like the two finest chicks in the club at this point. So that's what I mean when I say I felt like she was mine, and why she spoke to me so clearly. Like, I knew what a smooth operator was. I know, I know that Motown had its idea of what a smooth operating man was like. But that was like my Uncle Johnny in them.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:15Speaker 06

  I'm talking about the guys that I was partying with.

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  It's fascinating that she's, Sade is this combination of like, super elegant, but also sort of down to earth. Like, she, she's like a fashion model, she's like a pop star, but she also seems, you can just tell, like, someone you'd run into in, in the, in the bathroom at the club. Like, there's this, there's this combination of, you know, inaccessibility and total accessibility. Like, what is that about? Like, how do you do that?

• 1:16:46Speaker 06

  I, I think, um, for a girl who came up as, with hip hop, like, I came up, I didn't want to be super fancy. I wanted to, I didn't quite want to blend when I was out at shows or at nightclubs. But, like, I didn't want to wear, like,

• 1:17:11Speaker 06

  a fancy skirt necessarily and heels all the time. I wanted to be able to dance all night. I wanted my hair in a ponytail, because then I didn't have to worry about it. I wanted that one standout thing that made everybody say, oh, there's Danielle. For Sade, it was a red lip. For me, it was whatever it happened to be of a given, uh, Thursday or Friday night. And so I just, she was what we needed in that moment. Not to compare her to TLC, because they're so different. But when TLC came out, hat to the back, sneakers at the club, athletic bra at the club, um, on the red carpet, like that,

• 1:17:56Speaker 06

  it was, it was a similar feeling of, again, I'm seen. This is the kind of me I want to be. This is the kind of outside I want to be flying. And I don't have to look like I'm going to church at the club. I don't have to be in, like, business casual at the club. If the club says no sneakers, then I don't think that's a club that I really want to go to.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:24Speaker 06

  So, and Sade looks like the girl, and is the kind of girl, that shows up in ballet flats, jeans, a white t-shirt, a flawless ponytail, a low-key makeup situation going on.

• 1:18:43Speaker 06

  And she just seemed like she was free.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Another way that she's like Rihanna is, like, I think it's easy to forget now that Rihanna put out a record a year for like, a decade. Rihanna was just cranking out music so fast at the beginning of her career. And now it's very different, of course. Sade in the eighties puts out three fantastic albums, you know, rapid fire, in just five or six years. But starting with Love Deluxe, it's won a decade. You know, it's one in the nineties, one in the two thousands, you know, one in 2010, and, and that's it. Like, did it work to her benefits that she got a little more mysterious and remote and invisible a lot of the time? Do we love her more because she's giving us less and less of her?

• 1:19:26Speaker 06

  Yes. I think it's, I think it's calculated professionally, but I also think it's calculated personally. As, and, and let me go on record here and say, I've interviewed so many, um, people, so many black women in R&B, so many black women in pop, black women in jazz. I have never interviewed Sade. And it's like, who has, though?

• 1:19:53Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:19:54Speaker 06

  Aside from like, um, uh, Donny Simpson has a great interview with her on the Smooth Operator US rollout.

• 1:20:06Speaker 06

  And he's so, I love Donny. Donny's my favorite. I interviewed him on Black Girl Songbook. But he is so clearly smitten in that interview.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:20:17Speaker 06

  I'm like, Donny, I'm gonna need you to just breathe.

• 1:20:22Speaker 06

  And I say that, and I say that again with love and affection. Like, for all I know, that's how I'm gonna act if I ever interview her, right? Like, she, she just seemed so...

• 1:20:35Speaker 06

  The word cool is so overused, but her picture is really next to the word in the dictionary.

• 1:20:43Speaker 06

  And I think it's probably exhausting to be that cool all the time.

• 1:20:49Speaker 06

  I think um.

• 1:20:52Speaker 06

  I think that when you're in your twenties. Being cool doesn't seem like a job.

• 1:20:59Speaker 06

  And then when you're in your thirties and your forties.

• 1:21:04Speaker 06

  It takes a little bit more to pull that cool together.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:21:08Speaker 06

  It does. Not not that I would know anything about that, Rob, but I'm just saying.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  I know all about it. As the coolest person, yeah, in my house, I can I can assure you it's exhausting, but it's rewarding at the same time. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:21:23Speaker 06

  It is like.

• 1:21:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, each decade that goes by.

• 1:21:30Speaker 06

  You're further away from the center of things. And, oh, my God, sometimes it's so relaxing. My God.

• 1:21:43Speaker 06

  And I think for some Sade and for artists like Sade, for artists like Rihanna.

• 1:21:49Speaker 06

  Rihanna has chosen reinvention over relaxation and God bless.

• 1:21:55Speaker 06

  But I think that Sade, and we have to remember too. Janet didn't take Janet Jackson didn't take ten years. But Janet got to a cadence of like, what, every three or four or five years and just.

• 1:22:10Speaker 06

  And you would see this is before social media. And so when when there was like a. A tabloid shot of her, she was always like what seems someplace really far away. Looking super regular. God forbid she had allowed herself a cheeseburger and french fries. And.

• 1:22:29Speaker 06

  Like, it's hard to be a girl pop star. And it's hard. Ask Madonna, ask Janet. Some of them don't live to tell the story. Ask Whitney. It's hard to to do that. To always be beautiful. To always be cool, to always have on the right outfit, to always say the right or the. The most provocative or the most chilling ever, to always write the song that's going to. Or songs, plural, that are just going to touch the heart and soul of not just the generation that you came up with.

• 1:23:12Speaker 06

  But then the generation underneath them. Like, this is a job, Rob. That's a job.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Right. Something you said on your show that I really loved, you said Helena Do created Sade. So Helena Do could just be like you talked about Sade. You know, that's the it's her name is a pop star. It's the name of her band, but it's a protective persona. How do you think that's helped her? Do you think she's been able to just leave Sade, you know, the character, the monolith behind for increasingly long periods? And then come back to it sort of rejuvenated?

• 1:23:48Speaker 06

  Yes, I mean, as a black woman. We have protective styles for our hair, you know? So is we're either gonna braid it, we're gonna be deep conditioning it and putting it in twists. We're gonna. Decide on wigs for a while. We're gonna do whatever we're gonna do. And I really think that. That Sade is that. It's not a protective style. It's a protective persona. And she's under there like soaking up. Rest and soaking up deep conditioning and soaking up. I don't have to get my real hair dirty with the ways of the world. I don't have to get my real soul dirty with the ways of the world. And I think.

• 1:24:33Speaker 06

  That's the way you can, in your fifties, I think she was when. Was it Soldier of Love came out? And that's the way you can. Create a record like the song Soldier of Love. Like, who's coming out with a record like that at that age? That just snatches everybody by the throat. That that tells the story of her journey, right? As a singer songwriter, that tells the story of the journey of just like women's and maybe just people's lives. Like in general with regard to like.

• 1:25:19Speaker 06

  Still believing in love and relationship.

• 1:25:25Speaker 06

  When things can go so wrong. And do go so wrong just because life. How can you do that if you're trying to do it every year for for forty years?

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  If you're not living.

• 1:25:41Speaker 06

  Maybe you need a little bit of time. Yes, you maybe you need a little bit of time to think and live and maybe you need a little bit of time to marinate.

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  I thinking about the Lover's Rock record, like, that's two thousand, you know, and it's been eight years since Love Deluxe, since her last record, like, when that album came out, Lover's Rock. Did you hear her in conversation, like in competition or whatever with? TLC or Destiny's Child or Lauryn Hill or D'Angelo or even then, even in two thousand, had Sade already become. You know, like an island unto herself, where she's not really having to compete with anyone else or even live on the same planet as anyone else.

• 1:26:19Speaker 06

  I will rarely say this about anybody, but Sade really has no competition. I think. And maybe I'm only saying this because. She's gone. I I think that Whitney Houston had competition. Right? I think I think that Gladys Knight. Had and has competition.

• 1:26:44Speaker 06

  I'm just naming all my favorites, naming all my Hope to Die's, all my legends, all my. Soul Sisters.

• 1:26:55Speaker 06

  There's something about the mix of the way she looks, the way she dresses. There's something about there's the. The discipline with which she manages her tone.

• 1:27:10Speaker 06

  And her notes. There's something about. The vulnerability she allows herself in the songwriting.

• 1:27:21Speaker 06

  And I know she writes and co writes.

• 1:27:26Speaker 06

  There's there's a certain lack of performance in the performance, or at least she's got me and millions of others believing. It seems.

• 1:27:38Speaker 06

  It seems like her heart is really broken when she's singing about a broken heart. The closest she gets to Motown, I think, in her writing is the song where she sings the lines.

• 1:27:54Speaker 06

  Your love is.

• 1:27:57Speaker 06

  Wider. Wider than Victoria Lake. Your love is taller. Taller than the Empire State. Is that your love is king?

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:28:08Speaker 06

  I can't. It is, right? Because we're then we're in the Motown arena of like, Ain't No Mountain High Enough, you know what I mean? We're in that. We're in that arena. I think that.

• 1:28:22Speaker 06

  But even then, there's just something about the specificity of Lady Victoria.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:32Speaker 06

  And the Empire State Building, right? Above and beyond. And I say this with nothing but love and respect for all every. Ain't No Mountain High Enough that has ever been sung. Shout out to, is it Valerie Simpson and Nick Ashford, I do believe.

• 1:28:51Speaker 06

  But that specificity is something that Sade just kind of owns. She owned it. I think that people in her wake have taken on some of that. I would put SZA. I would put Ela May, I would put these people in that kind of space. Those are the kind of girls that I respond to, Money Long, those type of Kalani.

• 1:29:13Speaker 06

  Janae Co, like, these great folks.

• 1:29:19Speaker 06

  But that type of specificity, we just, I don't know if we were used to it.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:26Speaker 06

  Sounded straight out of her diary.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:29Speaker 06

  And. But yet I didn't even know, I think, for years that Lake Victoria. Was like. A real and like huge lake on the continent of Africa. I think it might go over two countries. I can't remember. But I didn't even know that, but somehow I still felt like she was singing about my life.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:29:55Speaker 06

  So there's something in her voice, in her songwriting that I just say. Competition because she's doing it all at the same time. You know Oprah says you can, you can have it all. You just can't have it all at the same time. I think Shadé might be having it all at the same time.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  I think you and I both agree. We both love the song King of Sorrow. You know, which, which is such a devastating song, but there's an incredible power to it and just like, I'm crying everyone's tears. As the opening line and just calling it King of Sorrow. Like, I don't know exactly what that means, but I know it means something incredibly important. What is that song? And what does that, you know, phrase, that title mean to you?

• 1:30:42Speaker 06

  Well, in the patriarchy, king is over queen. So she's letting you know that I'm, it's even more than. Being the queen of sorrow. That's how I always took it. And I always took it also that she's, you know. Nigerian but British and. And that's where they have the kings and the queens and stuff still over there. So that's, uh. I imagine just a part of her imagination, that language. I don't know if I automatically just think of kings and queens all the time when I'm writing. Or, or, or talking about music, but I think she probably does because there's, there's King of Sorrow, but there's Your Love is King. You know what I mean? Like she's gonna go back to it. Um.

• 1:31:24Speaker 06

  But I really feel like when she says, I'm crying everyone's tears. Um, I was like, oh my God, it doesn't matter that she's British. It doesn't matter that she's Nigerian. The thing is, it's very much giving just global black blues here. Okay, like I heard.

• 1:31:47Speaker 06

  I was the type of person in my twenties. I was going to jazz clubs.

• 1:31:53Speaker 06

  I was seeing Shaka Khan sing at, at jazz clubs when she was on tour and she would come to. To clubs in San Francisco after the, the big show and just sing to a small, uh, group. Um, Rosie Gaines, a great, um, Prince affiliated vocalist. Seeing her, Joan Osborne was singing the blues around the Bay Area when I was in my early, um, twenties. Um, shout out to Ann Powers for making me go to some of those shows. I say all this to say, my blues, um, like connection. It's like small, but kind of elite, right?

• 1:32:34Speaker 06

  So, so when I, when I heard her say, I'm crying everyone's tears, I was like.

• 1:32:45Speaker 06

  This is just the blue. This isn't even rhythm and blue.

• 1:32:50Speaker 06

  This is not R and B. This is B. Like.

• 1:32:57Speaker 06

  And just in that way that, you know.

• 1:33:02Speaker 06

  It can feel as a black woman.

• 1:33:07Speaker 06

  That you are just carrying everybody's burdens. Like you are.

• 1:33:15Speaker 06

  I mean, you've got your own, then you got your partners, you got your kids, if you have kids or you have your. Family, you have the job, you have. And all of this while still being considered low on the totem pole of humans on this earth.

• 1:33:36Speaker 06

  So to hear her sing.

• 1:33:40Speaker 06

  I'm crying everyone's tears. I could cry right now because Jesus Christ, like.

• 1:33:49Speaker 06

  Who's singing the blues in, what was that, two thousand? What, what year was that, Rob? I don't know. But like, who's singing? Yes, like.

• 1:33:59Speaker 06

  And she came in stomping like, y'all are gonna hear me. I'm starting the song with this. This is a lot of buried lyric. I'm letting you guys know where I am right now.

• 1:34:12Speaker 06

  And.

• 1:34:15Speaker 06

  And what that conveyed to me is she's telling me, this is where I am right now. And that conveyed to me, and I bet this is probably where you guys are right now.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  And I, I think that energy, you know, I think about By Your Side, right? Which is a song like she'll always be there for you. She'll be by your side, lay your head on my shoulder. Like that's, this is a classic. Pop song sentiment, but it sounds completely different. It sounds more sincere. She sounds more reliable. When she sings it, you believe Shadé. Like why, what is it about her that she's able to radiate, you know, this support and this solace? For so many people globally.

• 1:34:53Speaker 06

  I don't know what is going on with her. And she has made that so. Okay, she, I have no idea. I don't know if she has a man, a girlfriend. I don't know if she's. It got three boyfriends at the same time. I don't know if she's happy of a given moment, sad. The main thing I know is that she loves her child. She's made that clear and been loud and proud about that.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  Very much, yes.

• 1:35:30Speaker 06

  And that's like the, that's like where she lets us in.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:35:33Speaker 06

  That's like the door she opens, the mom door. She gonna give you that. Cause I think she wants us to emulate.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:35:42Speaker 06

  That kind of unconditional love. Yes, yes. But anything else, that's Auntie Shadé's business. And.

• 1:35:55Speaker 06

  I think that's why we're all able to find ourselves in her. Because there's room. There's room. One of my favorite songs of all time is Umbrella from Rihanna. And it's a great song. Like I'll be by, you know, by your side. It's a great song. Like you've got a friend. It's one of those songs that can be platonic or it could be like the beginning of the relationship. It could be the middle. It could be toward the end.

• 1:36:24Speaker 06

  But the thing about by your side, I don't know. It's just because I don't know anything about Shadé. I mean, we know a, a bit about Rihanna's life. It's a different era too. It's hard, it's hard to have secrets in this era.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  It's hard to hide.

• 1:36:38Speaker 06

  It's hard to have secrets. Yes. So we know the loves and the. And there's, you know, there's duets and there's all kinds of things that you can, oh, she must be, and maybe this is going on and all the. And now married with children. So you know what I mean? You know the.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:53Speaker 06

  But you don't know anything about Shadé, so you can just impose yourself upon her. Her life is your life. Your life is her life. Um. She's singing about, like I said, about Lake Victoria, but I would be writing about Lake Merritt in Oakland, California. And mean it just as hard. I would mean it just as hard. Yes.

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  One of the better lakes.

• 1:37:17Speaker 06

  It's a manmade lake. Yes. Are you familiar with Lake Merritt? It's a manmade lake.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  I used to walk around it. I used to push a baby carriage around it. I know all about Lake Merritt. Yes, I love Lake Merritt.

• 1:37:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. Oh man, not on a walk around Lake Merritt. Come on, Rob, you're missing out, man.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have to fly out there just to do that. Yes.

• 1:37:40Speaker 06

  Yes. So it's just, it's like I'm, it's like I'm saying, like. We all have our Lake Victoria. We all have our Lake Merritt. We all, and Shadé just lets us have it, man. Like. I'm trying to figure out sometime, I've been spending, I've spent a, a career, I've spent my adulthood.

• 1:37:59Speaker 06

  Trying to figure out why.

• 1:38:03Speaker 06

  The songs and.

• 1:38:06Speaker 06

  Whatever year it's from, it sounds like it came out yesterday.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:38:11Speaker 06

  I don't understand how smooth, Smooth Operator right now. Frankie's First Affair right now.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  These are forty year old songs, forty, forty plus year old songs. And yeah.

• 1:38:23Speaker 06

  And, and the kids play them like they came out yesterday. I get it. I, I will get in, I will get in. Well, let me not lie and say I'll get into the car with my nephew because I won't, because he's my nephew and that's how he drives. But, but I'll stand near his car with him while he's waxing it.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  Okay, yes.

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  Ten feet, ten or fifteen feet.

• 1:38:48Speaker 06

  Yes, exactly. I'll wave at him from across the street and. He's, will play Shadé. If he's, if he has a girlfriend. What's he playing, Shadé?

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  It's good move.

• 1:39:01Speaker 06

  My niece, my, my niece and, and these are people, my nephew's twenty one and my niece is twenty five.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:08Speaker 06

  These are, these are, these are young people. They feel like they're grown, but they're young people. And.

• 1:39:16Speaker 06

  It's weird for them that I know Shadé. And I'm like, what, how?

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  It's weird for you.

• 1:39:24Speaker 06

  What are you talking? You know this song, Auntie? Yes, ma'am. I, I, I do know that song.

• 1:39:36Speaker 06

  My God, like they're, they're into her learning

• 1:39:45Speaker 06

  about love and heartbreak.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:48Speaker 06

  Like again.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Soon.

• 1:39:52Speaker 06

  Again.

• 1:39:55Speaker 06

  And I remember, and that's another reason I think she stays, I always, I always say, Chade is in a castle somewhere. Um, that's the reason why she stays in her castle. It's a lot of emotional labor. I remember when Mary J. Blige told an interviewer, it wasn't me. I wish I can remember the person that she said it to, but she basically said, I'm tired of singing those sad songs.

• 1:40:18Speaker 06

  Like, I'm tired of it. Like, it's a lot. I'm not sad right now.

• 1:40:23Speaker 06

  I think Lauryn Hill, like in the years, in the early years after Miseducation was like the same. People are always like, well, Lauryn's late to her show. She had that reputation. To be honest, I always hated when people were complaining about Lauryn being late. Lauryn can come when she feels like it, as far as I'm concerned.

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  She'll be there.

• 1:40:41Speaker 06

  She can get there. Exactly. Exactly. I'll be there. You know what I'm saying? Still sipping on my cocktail.

• 1:40:47Speaker 01

  With breakfast. Yes.

• 1:40:49Speaker 06

  That's what I'm talking about, Rob. See, we're the same. So, but I think Lauryn said something to the effect, like, I'm not in that space. I don't want to go out and sing those songs. Sometimes she might be on the way to the show. Man, do I, like, I could hear her do lost ones.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  Lost ones.

• 1:41:07Speaker 06

  Hourly.

• 1:41:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:41:10Speaker 06

  I could hear it hourly, Rob. Live? I could hear it hourly. Can you imagine? How one would feel after doing it full out, to the full out extent, to quote Lauryn? Can you imagine doing that every night? And having to think about the person that you probably wrote that song about? We won't mention any names.

• 1:41:34Speaker 06

  Have to think about that person?

• 1:41:37Speaker 06

  It's like every night? And Chade, like, you want her to go out? On tour every two years, talking about? I'm crying everyone's tears. I would have been like, come on, Rob. Like, it's, it's, it's too much. I used to think about this even with like women like Nancy Wilson, the jazz singer, not the, um, I guess rock singer. It's like,

• 1:42:08Speaker 06

  she had that song about running into, what is that song? About running into, running into, running into your husband with his like side girlfriend at the cafe? And then waiting, not addressing him in the restaurant, in the cafe, but telling him, guess who I saw today? Right? That song?

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:33Speaker 06

  Nancy Wilson is on record saying it's a hard one to do.

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:39Speaker 06

  And I just can't imagine

• 1:42:44Speaker 06

  Sweetest Taboo every night?

• 1:42:51Speaker 06

  Sweetest Taboo is a song that made me ask myself. And I'm sure it's made a lot of people ask themselves, am I the problem?

• 1:43:02Speaker 06

  Am I the heartbreaker?

• 1:43:06Speaker 06

  Am I the villain in this story?

• 1:43:11Speaker 06

  And you want her to go out and sing that every other night?

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:17Speaker 06

  Sometimes I think you're just too good for me? Oh, my God.

• 1:43:25Speaker 06

  Oh, Rob, see, you're making me, why did you, is this the emotional episode?

• 1:43:32Speaker 06

  I didn't know I was invited to the emotional episode.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  It is now. It is now. Yes. It's, it's, this is a video podcast and we just try to make people cry. That's, that's our purpose for being here.

• 1:43:42Speaker 06

  Because it's not, it's not, it's not fair, Rob. Why don't you invite me on the, like, the happy episode? Where I need to be called for the walking, the walking on sunshine episode, starring Danielle Smith.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  You got it. You got it. We'll make an exception. We'll do, that's a 2000s song in spirit. We, we'll get you the happiest song we can think of.

• 1:44:04Speaker 06

  Can we? Can we, like? What's that song from Desiree? You gotta be, oh, there's one of those inspirational songs, right?

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  That's a good one.

• 1:44:14Speaker 06

  Gotta be bad. You gotta.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a great one.

• 1:44:17Speaker 06

  We can do that. Rob, that's a good one.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  That's a good one.

• 1:44:21Speaker 06

  Yes. And British too, right? British?

• 1:44:24Speaker 01

  I think so. I hope I'm right about that, but I think so. Yes. Yes.

• 1:44:29Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  Great video. Great video. Yes.

• 1:44:32Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 1:44:34Speaker 06

  The era of white seamless videos. White seamless in the background.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll, I'll talk to you about anything at any time. And next time we talk, yes, it will be in a much happier circumstance. No more crying everyone's tears. It's, it's time.

• 1:44:51Speaker 06

  No, no, it's too much.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  It's time to walk on sunshine. Danielle, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for talking.

• 1:44:59Speaker 06

  It's great to talk to you, Rob. Always, always. I love this show. Please keep doing it like forever.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  I will. Thank you so much. That means the world. Thank you.

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  Thanks very much to our guest this week, Danielle Smith. Very special thanks to David Quisenberry and the whole Quisenberry family for graciously allowing me to read Dan Quisenberry's poem. Dan's book of poetry is called On Days Like This and is published by Helicon Nine Editions. Thanks to our producers, Olivia Creary, Julianna Ress, Justin Sayles, and Chris Sutton. Animations and graphics by Chris Calliton. And special thanks to Cole Kutschner. And thanks to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to By Your Side by Chade. We'll see you next week.

• 1:45:59Speaker 06

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