Classy British singer Emeli Sande is probably one of the best artists you’ve never heard of.
I had heard this song previously, but I think I probably thought the song was by Rihanna or someone else. She definitely reminds me of her, at any rate.
Emeli is actually her middle name. Her first name is Adele, but she decided to go with her middle name after Adele started to get big, figuring that Adele had effectively owned that name against any other artist using it.
Born in Sunderland to a Zambian father and an English mother, she grew up in Scotland. She always had an interest and talent in music, writing her first song when she was eleven. No fool, however, she knew that a career in music was far from a guarantee, so she went to university and obtained a degree in neuroscience (pretty impressive ‘fall back’, if you ask me).
This song, ‘My Kind of Love’, was her second single in the U.S. market, reaching a peak position of 35 on the on the Top 40 Billboard charts. The song, however, is a little more up-beat than most of her music.
In fact, if you want to just play a good set of her music and let it play in the background while you do other things, I’ll post her concert at Royal Albert Hall below. It’s definitely worth a listen, and once you hear the opening song, you’ll be hooked like I was.
Emeli Sande has slowly been working her way into our collective conscience, but still isn’t well known in the U.S. (Photo from emelisande.com)