Experience Live Music in Ebrington Square

Emeli Sandé - How Were We To Know album biog

Love can make you giddy. It breaks your heart. Makes you a little crazy. Sends you into dizzying highs and crashing lows. This is what Emeli Sandé dives into on her sublime fifth album, How Were We To Know.

By now, the world is well-acquainted with the Scottish artist's spectacular voice. Whether you heard its power at the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2012 Olympics, or encountered it during one of her countless sold-out headline shows around the world, there's no mistaking it. And on this latest project, released just a year after her critically adored fourth album, Let's Say For Instance, Sandé is using that voice to its full, astonishing potential.

"I definitely got a lot off my chest on the last album – being with a new record label has given me so much more freedom," Sandé, who recently signed a deal with the independent Chrysalis Records, says. "There was a lot I wanted to say about myself, and I hope that through the lyrics people will get to understand me on a deeper level." There's no doubt that her millions of fans will feel even closer to her after hearing How Were We To Know, which Sandé notes is "very much" about relationships. "These are tales from a hopeless romantic," she says with a laugh. "I'm very romantic, and it gets me in trouble sometimes!"

How Were We To Know's 11 tracks explore intimate encounters with love in all its forms, along with the risk required to pursue it. "Once you've been hurt, it's very hard to pick up the pieces again and allow yourself to be vulnerable," Sandé says. "So I think these songs explore the bravery of love, and loving others but also yourself. These songs were pieces of a puzzle I had to put together, and now feels like the right time to share them." Into each track, Sandé has poured her heartbreak, grief and joy; there are lyrics that speak to the grief of a relationship that broke down, and to the bliss and heady rush of something that's just beginning to bloom.

From humble beginnings as a shy teenager growing up in rural Aberdeenshire – the daughter of a Zambian father and a mother from a working-class Cumbrian family – Sandé has risen to become one of Britain's most successful and respected artists, awarded an MBE for services to music in 2017. Even as a child, singing for her was freedom, and a safe space in which to discover her identity. She attended medical school in Glasgow before deciding to take the leap and pursue her dream of a career in music. Upon moving to London, she met producer Naughty Boy, with whom she wrote and contributed vocals for north London rapper Chipmunk's irrepressible 2009 hit "Diamond Rings", as well as Naughty Boy's debut single "Wonder" in 2012.

Sandé's own debut, 2012's Our Version Of Events, arrived after she was announced as the winner of the Critics' Choice prize at the BRIT Awards, in a blaze of critical acclaim and praise from legendary artists including Madonna and Alicia Keys. Featuring hit singles including "Heaven", "Read All About It" and "Next To Me", Our Version Of Events was the biggest-selling album of the year and remains one of the best-selling records of the 2010s.

In a way, How Were We To Know is Sandé coming full circle, as she found she was able to have full creative freedom on an album that is so personal, and be guided by her own instincts. "I think this is the first record since the first where I've had enough time to work out what I really want to say," she explains. "Our Version Of Events covered everything that took place in my life before I moved to London, and so you had this slow marinating of the songs. This album is the same, with lockdown giving me time to let the music do its own thing, which is so exciting."

For How Were We To Know, Sandé assembled many of the trusted producers, mixers and engineers who worked with her on her previous four albums. This includes Mac & Phil, who co-wrote and produced the majority of her second album, Long Live The Angels, and Ollie Green, with whom she collaborated on 2022's Let's Say For Instance. First single "There For You" was written with music manager and writer Daniel Caruana, with its origins as a piano-based track evidenced in the bridge. "Daniel usually writes for rappers but one night I was at the piano and I asked him to write a hook, he most definitely delivered! Love the chorus! Everything came together so naturally!" Sandé said.

It opens in a soft haze. Sandé's voice is a diaphanous lilt: "Even though it hurts, I'll still be there for you," she pledges. The track is laced through with subtle Eighties references, from the thrum of the bass to the classic sound of the Yamaha DX7 and, of course, the euphoric saxophone solo. "The song itself is about how I'll always have love for the people I've been with," she says. "Even if I'm pissed off with them for a couple of years, I'll always care for them – I'll always want to know they're OK. Because once you've committed to that love with someone, it doesn't just go away."