By Your Side

Sade returned in 2000 after an eight year absence with the album Lovers Rock, and By Your Side was its first single, built on a lazy reggae influenced pulse and Sade Adu's unhurried voice. The lyric is a plain reassurance, a promise to stay close through bad days, delivered without any sense of performance. Couples choose it because it is grown up and calm, suited to people who want a first dance that does not demand attention, and the tempo allows a slow sway. The band recorded the album at studios in Oxfordshire, London and southern Spain, and the single reached the UK top twenty while the album sold close to four million copies in America alone.