What’s changed for Emeli Sande since 2009? Well, she still has a big voice; back then also had big hair. She’s being interviewed by tabloid! again, and she’s performing in the UAE again, too, as the highlight of this New Year’s Eve’s Sandance. Back in 2009, we chatted to her as she performed a few shows at the Warehouse at Le Meridien Dubai. Then, she had just had a hit with Chipmunk’s Diamond Rings; her debut album, Our Version Of Events, released last year, has been one of the UK’s biggest albums ever, breaking a record set by the Beatles for the most consecutive weeks in the UK’s album chart top 10 of any debut. But let’s hear it from the lady herself.
“The biggest changes are that people now know me as an artist; I can front my own music,” said Sande by email, ahead of her concert on Tuesday night. “Also, I have grown in confidence within the music industry.”
The English-Ghanaian singer was in the fifth year of her medical studies when she visited Dubai to perform some background soul at the club on weeknights, telling tabloid!, “it’s not easy. Music will always be my No 1 passion but medicine also fascinates me. I hope I never have to choose but if I did I think music would win.”
The choice has clearly been made, and with it a rollercoaster few years. “The low points are not seeing family and friends often enough, tiredness from a huge amount of travelling and never being in the same place for very long,” Sande said of the best and worst parts of her success. “The high points have been the release of my first album and its subsequent success, the incredible live shows and all the inspirational people and places I have met and seen along the way!”
Next up for Sande is “a new compilation, which I feel very excited about,” and will be working with Naughty Boy again on her second album. Of choosing her collaborators, she said she looks for someone different from her style. “I like someone who wakes and shakes me.”
“I love to work with people who inspire me,” she added. “There has to be a connection as a person — usually something different about the person will attract me to work with them.”