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Emili Sande VibeZ

Twenty-seven tracks from a Scottish-Zambian songwriter who was studying medicine when the music took over, and who writes hooks that other people's careers get built on.

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Emeli Sandé

Emeli Sandé grew up in Aberdeenshire, the daughter of a Zambian father and an English mother, and was several years into a medical degree in Glasgow before she committed to music. That is not a detail for colour: the discipline shows in how her records are built.

She arrived as a writer first, supplying songs and hooks to British rappers and producers, and the crossover to her own records happened almost by accident. Our Version of Events (2012) became one of the biggest-selling British albums of its decade, and she then spent years being marketed as an inspirational balladeer, which flattened a considerably more interesting artist.

The later work is where she gets interesting. The gospel influence moves to the front, the arrangements get sparser, and the writing becomes more political and more explicitly rooted in faith.

What to listen for

"Clown" is the best song she has written — a piece about being made to perform, built on almost nothing but piano and a melody that keeps rising past where you expect it to stop.

"Heaven" is the record that started everything, and it is worth remembering how strange it was for a debut single: a Shirley Bassey-scale vocal over a breakbeat.

"Selah" and "Love Not War" are the later, more overtly spiritual material, and "Tenderly" with The Serenje Choir and her brother Joel is the most personal thing here — Serenje is in Zambia.

"Beneath Your Beautiful" with Labrinth and "Never Be Your Woman" with Naughty Boy and Wiley are the collaborations that made her name in Britain, and the second is built on a Ladytron song, which almost nobody notices.

"Somebody Else" with Robert Glasper is where she sounds most like a jazz singer, and "Garden" with Jay Electronica is the most unexpected credit in her catalogue.

"Breaking The Law" and "Where I Sleep" are the deep cuts, and "Babe" in the Team Salut remix is the afrobeats crossover.

Go deeper

Our Version of Events (2012) is the commercial peak; Real Life (2019) and Let's Say for Instance (2022) are where she sounds most like herself.

For British singer-songwriters working the same territory of gospel-inflected pop with serious writing underneath: Laura Mvula, Jacob Banks and Michael Kiwanuka.

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