Songfacts®:

• "No Ordinary Love" is about an improbable and unusual romance, a recurring theme in Sade's songs. Sade is both a group and the name of their lead singer: Sade Adu, who was born in Nigeria but moved to England when she was young. Her vocal style is very intimate, almost in a speaking voice like she's telling you a secret. Framed over the bass-heavy grooves of her band, it creates a sound that evokes passionate love - the kind that's far from ordinary.
• "No Ordinary Love" is featured in the 1993 movie Indecent Proposal, starring Robert Redford as a rich guy who offers Woody Harrelson $1 million to sleep with his wife (Demi Moore). The song was released about eight months before the movie, but the film brought a lot of attention to it, and in the UK sent it back up the chart to #16, besting its original position of #26.
• In the Sophie Muller-directed music video, Sade Adu is a mermaid who makes a wedding dress and searches for love on dry land. Unlike the Weeki Wachee mermaids, she doesn't emit any bubbles when she breathes, which has us a little suspicious. Perhaps she has a special voice box like a whale so she can sing without exhaling.
• Deftones put their own spin on "No Ordinary Love," but at first, they never intended anyone outside the band to hear it. Their frontman Chino Moreno told The Guardian the song was "sacred ground" out of respect for Sade, and recording it felt almost too self-indulgent. The stripped-down demo was tracked in Moreno's garage purely for themselves, and the thought of Sade possibly hearing it made him uneasy.
  
  The Deftones cover was first included on the B-side to their "(Change) In The House Of Flies" single released in 2000, and in 2005 it was part of their B-Sides & Rarities collection before resurfacing on their 2011 Covers album for Record Store Day. Fans embraced it, and the band even played it live a few times, including a memorable 2009 performance with Jonah Matranga of Far, but Moreno still admits he's not sure Sade has ever heard their version.
• Sade Adu wrote this song with the band's saxophone player, Stuart Matthewman. At the time, Sade was married to a Spanish film director named Carlos Scola Pliego.
• "No Ordinary Love" was the first single from Sade's fourth album, Love Deluxe. Their '80s hits include "Smooth Operator" and "The Sweetest Taboo"; "No Ordinary Love" is their most memorable song of the '90s, and Love Deluxe was the only album they released that decade. After that, the group convened only when Sade Adu was inspired, which happened for their 2000 album Lovers Rock and their 2010 album Soldier of Love.