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

Booker T. Jones

Booker T. JonesSongwriter Interviews

The Stax legend on how he cooked up "Green Onions," the first time he and Otis Redding saw hippies, and if he'll ever play a digital organ.

The Girl in That Song

The Girl in That SongFact or Fiction

Billie Jean, Delilah, Sara, Laura and Sharona - do you know who the girls in the songs really are?

Christopher Cross

Christopher CrossSongwriter Interviews

The man who created Yacht Rock with "Sailing" wrote one of his biggest hits while on acid.

How The Beatles Crafted Killer Choruses

How The Beatles Crafted Killer ChorusesSong Writing

The author of Help! 100 Songwriting, Recording And Career Tips Used By The Beatles, explains how the group crafted their choruses so effectively.

Emmylou Harris

Emmylou HarrisSongwriter Interviews

She thinks of herself as a "song interpreter," but back in the '80s another country star convinced Emmylou to take a crack at songwriting.

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."