Our Version of Events
Our Version of Events is the debut studio album by Scottish singer Emeli Sandé. The album was released on 13 February 2012 by Virgin Records, following Sandé's winning of the Critics' Choice Award at the BRIT Awards 2012. Though Our Version of Events is her first album release, Sandé has been active in the industry since 2009, most notably appearing on singles by Chipmunk and Wiley. The album features R&B, soul and pop music.
Sandé began working with Alicia Keys for the album, and for Keys' upcoming album. She also expressed interest in working with Nicki Minaj on the album. Naughty Boy was a major collaboration with Sandé from the day she began creating music professionally. She wrote every track on the album, saying that the key to a good song when writing is using "honesty" and "raw emotion". Upon release of the album, Sandé's vocal ability was compared to the likes of Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Annie Lennox, Tracy Chapman, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell and Lauryn Hill. Madonna also expressed interest in Sandé's music.
"Heaven" was released in August 2011 as the first single from the album, charting at number two on the UK Singles Chart and later became an international success, charting within the top ten in many European countries. Sandé released "Read All About It" with Professor Green in November 2011, which resulted in her writing "Read All About It, Pt. III". "Daddy" was released in November 2011, charting at number 21 on the UK Singles Chart and also becoming an international success. "Easier in Bed", a non-album promotional single was released onto iTunes in December 2011. "Next to Me" was the third single released, and became a global hit, entering the UK Singles Chart at number two and the Irish Singles Chart at number one. "My Kind of Love" was released as the fourth single from the album in June 2012, with Sandé appearing on The Voice UK to promote the single. Upon release, the album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and remained at the top spot for five non-consecutive weeks. The British Phonographic Industry certified the album 2× Platinum, making it the fastest selling album by a British recording artist since Susan Boyle's I Dreamed a Dream. It was later certified 8× Platinum. The album also peaked at number one on the Irish Albums Chart.
A re-release of the album occurred on 22 October 2012. It included three new tracks, a remix and a cover of "Imagine", replacing Sandé's version of "Abide with Me". "Wonder" was released as the lead single from the re-release. It also serves as the lead single from collaborator Naughty Boy's album Hotel Cabana. In September 2012, Our Version of Events became the best-selling album of 2012 in the UK, overtaking Adele's 21. It was also the second best-selling album of 2013 in the UK.
Background
Sandé first appeared in public when she sent a video into Trevor Nelson's BBC urban music competition, where she played piano while singing one of her favourite songs, "Nasty Little Man". It was later announced that she had won the competition and Sandé was offered a record deal. However, once she met the management to finalise the contract for the recording contract, the management decided against giving Sandé a deal. Her parents later sent BBC Radio 1Xtra a CD of her songs and Ras Kwame played the songs on his "Homegrown Sessions", and four artists that year were asked to do a show in Soho in the United States. She later met Shahid Khan, who has previously worked with Ms Dynamite and Bashy. Khan said "When we started together it took the music to something completely original. It took me out of my jazz piano niche, and it took him out of his urban scene. Then we started writing for pop people."Sandé began by writing tracks for artists such as Alesha Dixon, Chipmunk, Professor Green, Devlin, Preeya Kalidas, Cheryl Cole, and Tinie Tempah. While trying to get into the music industry she was studying medicine at the University of Glasgow, but she decided to stop in her fourth year. Sandé always said that her education was the most important thing to her, stating if her music career was to fail, she would have her education to fall back on. Sandé said that her manager, Adrian Sykes, waited patiently since she was 16, saying "Adrian really respects that I want to get an education behind me. He also knows my parents are keen that I finish university." Sandé first performed publicly when she provided guest vocals on Chipmunk's hit single, "Diamond Rings" which she also wrote in 2009. A year later she returned again to the public's attention when she teamed up with Wiley on his comeback single, "Never Be Your Woman", the song became Sandé second top-ten single on the UK Singles Chart. It was later announced that "Never Be Your Woman" was a trail for Sandé with EMI Records to see how well the song charted, with the success the song had, Sandé later signed a record deal with Virgin Records.
Development
Sandé took her middle name Emeli on professionally two years before she hit the limelight as Adele had just risen to prominence. "I changed it as soon as Adele came out. I just thought, 'You've kind of taken the now', so I went with my middle name. She was just getting bigger and bigger, so I thought I just really need it."Sandé said that once she won the Critics' Choice Award at the BRIT Awards she said she was more excited for her album to come out and that her confidence has grown, as her album was not out at time of the awards, but she said no matter how happy she was with the record there will always be doubts lurking somewhere. "I'd spent so long behind the scenes writing for other people and featuring on other people's records so it just felt so good to get the acknowledgement for me as an artist in my own right." She spoke on the relief she had once she had signed a record deal with Virgin Records in 2010 as she spoke it was a "long journey to get signed" as she said "once you get established as a songwriter it's quite hard to get people to recognise you as an artist in your own right. It felt like a long battle to get people to see me and believe in my music. Lots of Record labels didn't want to sign me. So it was great to prove people wrong in that sense."
Tracy Chapman was later added to the name of people she wanted to work with. Beyoncé and Stevie Wonder both said they wanted to work with Sandé. She said that while they assume that she is currently busy, knowing Wonder would like to work with her was a dream come true. She said she would continue to collaborate with Alicia Keys on her upcoming album, and she would be flattered to work with Beyoncé as her voice is unparalleled. Nicki Minaj was also someone who she would like to collaborate with on the album, but did not get the chance. Her vocal ability is often compared to Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Christina Aguilera and Annie Lennox.
Recording
Sandé said, as much as she would like, she would never play the piano as well as Simone, but she would give it her best shot. She loves the songs Simone produced, including "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" and Simone's version of "I Think It's Going to Rain Today". She said that Simone's original songs are very poetic and she said "So when I listen to commercial stuff at the moment, I'm just thinking 'haven't you heard Nina Simone, haven't you heard how a song should be written?"Sandé began working in the studio with Naughty Boy in 2009, where the pair first worked together on Chipmunk's debut album I Am Chipmunk. She said that she wanted the songs on her debut album to be fresh and she wanted to try and take it back how she wrote songs at the beginning of her career. Sandé had classical music training as a songwriter in her teens and learnt to play the piano at an early age, and getting across that she played, made and wrote her own music was very important to her. She said on the album, she wanted people to see every side of her as an artist, so it was important to have songs there where there could be a real connection with the lyric, rather than there just be throwaway pop music. Joni Mitchell and Lauryn Hill were also major influences for the album.
She began working with Professor Green on the album. The pair had previously worked together on the rapper's albums Alive Till I'm Dead in 2010 on the track "Kids That Love to Dance" and At Your Inconvenience in 2011, on the track "Read All About It". This became Sandé's and Professor Green's first number-one single on the UK Singles Chart. The singer pointed out that she has set the song out like a story of her life. She said that the album is very different from the first two singles which she released from the album "Heaven" and "Daddy" and "Read All About It" with Professor Green and that fans should expect something a little different. Sandé also met Madonna after they were both guests on The Graham Norton Show, and Madonna expressed interest in working with Sandé in the future. Madonna also spoke about her love for her track "Next to Me".
She said that there will be moments on the album that are a lot more intimate and a lot more stripped back to other tracks on the album, but these tracks show and stand out. Sandé said people didn't know what do with her, it was just her and her piano, which was very stripped, it was completely different from what everyone was used to and different from everything that was currently out. However, she stressed that it is good to be different and not predictable.
Ed Sheeran has spoken about his support her Sandé and her music, saying that she has spent a lot of time on the record and that it could be as big as Adele's second album, 21, which has sold over 27 million records worldwide. Sandé revealed that she wanted to bring poetry back into music, as it has been lost. The songs which are currently being released are for the "moment" as they make us feel good and we can dance to them, Sandé said. She said that Our Version of Events will see poetry lyrics, as she intends to bring them back into fashion. She said; Great songwriters come along quite rarely, but when I listen to Tracy Chapman or Joni Mitchell, these are people who pay attention to the lyric and are precise about it. I feel that has been put second to having a cool producer or whether the kids will like it. She said that the music industry is hard to get into, but once you are in, it is very loyal. In the recording studio, Syco Music heard some of Sandé's songs which they wanted, but she refused and told them she wanted to keep them for her own album. They later asked her to write for some of their artists, and Leona Lewis went into the studio with her and Naughty Boy to record for a couple of weeks, and she said that her and Lewis had a lot in common. She also said that Lewis has a phenomenal voice and she was lovely.
"Boys" which was Cheryl Cole's B-side track to "3 Words" was originally for Sandé's album. However, she said when she heard Cole sing it, she loved how what the lyrics meant to Cole was different from what they meant to her when she wrote it, so Sandé decided to give the track to Cole.