Tenderly

Album: Long Live The Angels (2016)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • This song features Sandé's Zambian teacher father Joel Sandé and her cousins. The latter are credited as The Serenje Choir, named after the town of Serenje in the Serenje District of Zambia.
  • The song was inspired by an Oxfam sponsored trip that Sandé made to Zambia in 2014 to investigate women's rights to health care and education.

    The singer and her father took the opportunity to take some voice memos of some of the Zambian songs they heard when they visited her grandmother's remote village. Sandé, who grew up in Scotland, told Radio 4's Front Row program:

    "They'd light the fire and everyone would sing. Me singing wasn't really that impressive at all, because everyone could do it. Everyone naturally had that musical ear. I felt a real big part of me was filled. Something I felt had been missing growing up, you know, feeling very different, not connected. Suddenly this, it was full. And I felt like a complete person."
  • The last day before Sandé left Zambia, her Zambian family were singing a beautiful song in their native language about love and forgiveness, which inspired the creation of this track.
  • This was helmed by Mac & Phil, who have worked with the likes of Beyoncé and Miguel in the past. They produced or co-produced eight of Long Live The Angels' 15 tracks.

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

George Harrison

George HarrisonFact or Fiction

Did Eric Clapton really steal George's wife? What's the George Harrison-Monty Python connection? Set the record straight with our Fact or Fiction quiz.

Lip-Synch Rebels

Lip-Synch RebelsSong Writing

What happens when Kurt Cobain, Iron Maiden and Johnny Lydon are told to lip-synch? Some hilarious "performances."

Barney Hoskyns Explores The Forgotten History Of Woodstock, New York

Barney Hoskyns Explores The Forgotten History Of Woodstock, New YorkSong Writing

Our chat with Barney Hoskyns, who covers the wild years of Woodstock - the town, not the festival - in his book Small Town Talk.

Mark Arm of Mudhoney

Mark Arm of MudhoneySongwriter Interviews

When he was asked to write a song for the Singles soundtrack, Mark thought the Seattle grunge scene was already overblown, so that's what he wrote about.

Mike Scott of The Waterboys

Mike Scott of The WaterboysSongwriter Interviews

The stories behind "Whole Of The Moon" and "Red Army Blues," and why rock music has "outlived its era of innovation."

Little Big Town

Little Big TownSongwriter Interviews

"When seeds that you sow grow by the wicked moon/Be sure your sins will find you out/Your past will hunt you down and turn to tell on you."