Singer Emeli Sande reveals how her new boyfriend has inspired her latest album
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Emeli backs the Black Lives Matter movement is a collaboration with Ghanaian artist and Grammy nominee Stonebwoy and British producer and songwriter Nana Rogues.
Emeli, from Alford, Aberdeenshire, said: “I was falling in love and wanted to sum up the feeling that creeps up on you and catches you by surprise.
“First, the feelings are subtle, a strange sensation of missing someone you consider a friend, which starts to build.
“In this song, I wanted to capture the crossover moment when you realise the subtle feelings you once perhaps denied have now been realised into something undeniable.
“You want to shout from the rooftops. You can’t get enough, you can’t share their love and want the whole world to know how beautiful they are to you.”
Like so many people, Emeli, who now lives in London, adapted to lockdown restrictions by working from home.
She said: “I have been readjusting to the new world, I guess. Being in lockdown has been OK because I have a studio at home. As soon as lockdown happened, I realised it was the best investment I’ve ever made.
“It allows me to be completely creative
CARING
The star has thought about becoming a doctor and at 2am I can walk down in my pyjamas and get ideas down that I wouldn’t be able to get down if I was booking a studio.”
Emeli has talked in the past about growing up as a mixed-race woman. Her father Joel is Zambian while her mother Diane is English, and she has spoken up in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was behind protests s that took place on both sides of f the Atlantic after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis is police officer.
She said: “I think it was such an n emotional upsurge.
“There has been so much that people haven’t felt they could say or haven’t felt has been expressed.
“It’s so important that we can express it now.
“If you’re not black or don’t have black children, it’s very hardd to understand these emotions.
“For many people, it may have come as a surprise but I’m just so happy that at least the conversation has been opened and people don’t feel as silenced. This was the tip of the iceberg for protests like that to happen. For thousands of people to come out, it shows there is so much under water that needs to be discussed and sharedshare for empathy as a nation. nati
ON WRITE TRACK Emeli’s albums have been hits
“There’sTh so much more to be done.
“AndA even though there are manym people who don’t agreeagre and still don’t get whatwh ’ s happened or what’swhha going on, I’m just gladglla that I can see those peoplepee and we can be veryveer open about the factf they don’t believe in thisth but I do.
“BeforeB it was very murkymur and you don’t know how people felt. “EvenEv if somebody feels the oopposite to me, I’d ratherrathe it was plain and in sight.sight I’mI glad the truth is coming out.
“Black Lives Matter has maybe been misinterpreted by people.
“Really, it is just saying, please empathise with us because we’re human beings and we’re all equal and everyone deserves equal opportunities and freedoms.
“Sadly, even in 2020, we still don’t have that equality.
“And if people disagree with that, then at least I know that those are the type of people I don’t want to be around.
“If you don’t agree that everyone is equal, there’s no conversation to be had.”
Emeli – who gained a degree in neuroscience before fame beckoned – has considered using her medical training during this year’s pandemic.
She said: “When the pandemic first came along, it made me dig deeper on what I wanted to give to society because of my training. That is a very direct way to help people.
“When I saw the work and overload the NHS were taking on, I was completely humbled. I mean, they’re working all the time.
“It shouldn’t have taken that for us to be clapping the NHS but it really brought it home that, while people are sacrificing their lives and risking their families’ lives to help other people, I wanted to be of service.
“It made me re-evaluate how I want to be of service to others. It changed my perspective in that way.
“I don’t think I’d be a qualified doctor until I was 39.
“Sometimes I do consider it but it would be a very big change in my life and I’m sure I’d have to start at the very beginning again. It would be a really big undertaking.
“I’d like to go into psychiatry or psychology or maybe counselling because I really love to listen to people.
“I love to get into the mind and help people on that level.”
Of the tracks that will make up the new album, she added: “I’ve made lots of music. It just needs organising.
“The last album was me digging as deep as possible and trying to be as raw and open as possible because I felt I owed that to the fans, to explain where I’d been and how I’d changed and progressed.
“That’s all said and done now and I’m a lot happier and I think now I can continue and have fun with music again.”