Sade's musical legacy lies in her ability to fill expansive emotion into recounting the deep and defining moments of love. It never feels personal to her, but universally personal to the listener, a skill that none have mastered in quite the same realm. She, as well as her band, have made an entire career of this aim, and for her first album release in a decade, Soldier of Love does not deviate from form. There are huge hooks, solid songwriting, fantastically expressive and even fanciful orchestration, and in an era where the market has been deluged by a new female soul vanguard that angles increasingly towards pop, Sade remains regal, calm, collected and steadfast, and merely releases the standard bearer album to define the female expression in R & B for 2010.
